He is 32 years old, originally from Nice, and for several years, he has been walking around with his boots and especially his camera in the streets and alleys of the city where he was born and raised.
His name is Sylvain Collet. This “shooter” of modern times proceeds cautiously and stealthily in an art of which he has always doubted the legitimacy. It is through the lens of poetry, which he has embraced for 16 years, that photography has finally come to hold the interest it deserves for him. Poetry without words, what a gamble!
Currently, an exhibition of his photographs called “Psychoanalysis of Wrecks” is on display at the bar “le Ketje” located at 15 rue Auguste Gal.
The artist offers a poetic approach to visual reality, taking the time to focus on details that escape us in everyday life, such as bolts, cinders, and fallen streetlamps.
A gaze that delves uncompromisingly into withered, worn, aged materials to reveal their lived experience. A compassion for the reformed object, the remains of the workshop, which illuminates human feelings of sorrow and overwhelming sadness, but also and most importantly, the human ability to survive through the richness of its own wrinkles and emotional scars.
Here we have a proposal to dream in the mirror rather than a truly directive speech, and everyone must find the echo of their own lived but surpassed sorrows, despite the apparent harshness of the subjects.
Interview Sylvain Collet
Sylvain, what is photography for you?
A craft I did not initially deem worthy of the name, but it has tamed my opinion as I gradually master its practice, however awkwardly. When successful, it allows for an immediate touch on sensitivity, without a word. It is this silent strength that made me love it. To me, photography is to poetry what sexual penetration is to a love letter.
Triggering raw emotion instantly, bypassing speech. Therefore, it’s very practical for sharing grief, anger, exhilaration, astonishment—all these emotions that text often struggles to describe. But above all, it is a scientific means of capturing light from subject A at an instant T from an xyz viewpoint, and light is something you can never catch up to. Magic, right?
I’ve come to agree with those natives who say we “steal the soul” by photographing them. What is it to capture a bit of their light for a moment, with all that it contains? With the power to reproduce it afterward! It’s also a good way to compose a clean image when you can’t paint or don’t have the time.
For this exhibition, it’s hopefully a way to share quite special sensations. I’ve been moved by objects because they resembled my feelings. My subconscious focuses on a subject, and I shoot; if it’s successful, the audience’s subconscious is touched by the same emotion. It’s about intimate sharing, otherwise impossible except through masterful musical composition.
What has been your path, strewn with obstacles or a royal road?
The path of a youngster forced into technological studies despite his artistic wishes under the pretext of a “royal path” and good grades in math. Therefore, my artistic practice was guilty until recently. “Arts and letters lead to nothing…” After scientific studies, I worked on construction sites, then as a depressed salesman, then as a green tourism animator where I started photographing.
I was organizing a slow turnaround. Meanwhile, I have always_written poetry, as breaths of fresh air. Then I landed a job as a salaried photographer, where for 4 years I trained in photographic practice, between books and personal tips. I worked for the biggest hotels from Menton to St Tropez, Saint Barthelemy, London, with the same seriousness I had learned on construction sites. The profession of a photographer makes many dream, but I did it like wiring an electrical panel with precision, because I had never dreamed of it.
Then, finally, as I continued to use it, the camera became a means of expressing personal feelings, as I liked to do in poetry. This is what has led to this exhibition: snapshots taken over professional journeys mostly, moments of dream stolen from duty and frenzy.
What are your plans?
I continue to work as a photographer in tourism and hotels, and in event planning for the food industry. I see the future in the long term, only offering skills I have, and as I expand them, I aim to satisfy an increasingly broad range of clients.
I will continue to train, especially in black and white lab and portrait photography, but these trainings are expensive. As for artistic photography, this exhibition is the cry of a newborn: full of pain and revolt but full of life. Now that I have been able to communicate these emotions, I will turn towards more pleasant feelings, and attempt in the same vein to provide comfort and wonder. I will continue to focus on the memorial content of waste and used objects anyway.
I might venture into body photography, which fascinates many photographers though not necessarily me. I would like to photograph old naked women, full of history, unlike these smooth girls who have nothing to tell. This exhibition will move to the cafeteria of the Espace Magnan in early October and will hopefully find other venues thereafter because it is very dear to me.
And if Sylvain were a book, a photo, and a song?
A book: Existentialism is a Humanism, J.P. Sartre.
A photo: Self-portrait with a Fallen Streetlamp, by myself.
A song: Tous les mômes by Kent.