Book Prologue
A Travel Photographer in the Footsteps of His Photography
Bernard Plossu is a travel photographer. However, his travels are merely an excuse for his photography, not so much about the destination but about the joy of movement itself. Plossu needs the sense of exploration to meet again, renewed, with what he already knows. His photographs, from Spain, Mexico, Greece, France, or the many other places he has traveled, are primarily images of his own imaginary country rather than of a specific place. Placing them in the pages of a travel guide would be misleading.
Nevertheless, it is a fact that the peculiarities of each place impress the photographer and make him capture them with the surprise of a newcomer. But the chaos of Athens, its rough sidewalks, the Parthenon amid today’s tastelessness, or the quaintness of the Monastiraki market cannot surprise the accustomed Greek viewer, nor do they seem to help the photographer give his best. Their exoticism seems to distract him from his personal quests.
Where Bernard Plossu proves his photographic greatness and affirms his charming obsessions is when he uses the Athenian environment to give us moments from his own world, which he has managed to build with scenes from all his travels. In these cases, the Athenian peculiarity becomes the pretext, the background, the setting for his familiar, tender, and so attractive minimalist view, producing photographs that belong to no place in particular.
Going through Plossu's entire commendable and significant work, one cannot help but be enchanted and moved by the sense of a fleeting gaze and a low-key proposal. The photographs seem to be born without the photographer’s intention. The frames give the impression of having emerged, not been constructed. We are far from any formalistic geometry. Yet, after the initial surprise and emotion, one realizes that a strict composition, harmony, and calmness in the photographic structure discreetly predominate in Plossu's images.
Plossu possesses many subtle and initially invisible methods and codes to create stylistic unity in his work, capable of eliciting a very discreet emotion in the viewer who wishes to delve beyond the apparent triviality of the subjects. Identifying the syntactical elements of a photographer’s language is not always easy or intended, but the effort can aid in reading and appreciating.
Plossu carefully avoids the overly strong presence of the printed photograph. In his work, the photo object is persistently rendered without dramatic printing emphasis. Low contrasts, tonal flattening. The lens focus does not correlate with depth assessment. What appears randomly focused is not contrasted with what seems unfocused. The final impression leads to an image that our eyes would generate without the intervention of the camera and printer, an image with a gentle sense of pleasant surprise and mild emotion. Plossu manages to use the eye as a tool that visually conveys internal emotions and sensitivities, and here "transfers" indicates the metaphorical function of the photographic medium.
Plossu fully exploits the unique ability of this medium to reverse the values and meanings of reality. He knows well that the role (and ability) of photography is to lead to the major through the minor, to the whole through detail, to duration through the moment, thus photographically transforming the values of the subjects he captures. Despite this general framework, the particular construction of his photographs creates small units within his work.
For example, a significant presence, set against a much larger but seemingly insignificant background, has always been one of Plossu's captivating finds: a small girl with blowing hair in front of an unremarkable inflatable boat showroom, a contemplative man on the parapet of a nowhere highway, the tiny fishing boat in the middle of sky and sea, the lonely black cat in the poor neighborhood, the dog and pigeon, indifferent passersby in a large park. (Pages...............)
The broader, neutral urban space is often treated through a subjective detail, connecting it with a personal gaze and hinting at human presence: the chaotic city through a car whose roof and mirror define the private space, the same messy city organized formally through the car’s interior directing our gaze to a cyclist on the left and a sign on the right, with the windshield turning into a photographic frame to illustrate the city's passersby. The neatly arranged boredom of three clearly focused apartment buildings contrasts (or accompanies) the symmetrical presence of a blurred fence in the foreground. The chaotic, gray, night-time, blurred city outlined behind the street lamps' reflection. The noisy and chaotic port defined by the dynamic presence of a ship's bulwark. The stadium and the large city behind it serve as an echo to a bright street lamp and a dark bus column from where the shot is taken. (Pages...............)
There are moments where the foreground and background deliberately merge, interacting within the same seeming indifference: the backs of people moving towards the colorless building of the old airport, the crowd waiting in front of the bus shelter, the shadowed heads in front of the moist bus window, the dark backs of visitors to the Acropolis in front of the brightly lit Parthenon in the distance, the travelers sitting under the impressively large frame and equally large roof of the waiting area, the vast sky over the narrow, expansive city. (Pages...............)
But individual people often have their place in front of Plossu's lens, almost never focused and usually always in motion during an indeterminate and rather indifferent activity: the hopeful walking, the girl reading a magazine, the woman reading a newspaper, the waiting traveler, the woman with black sunglasses walking. (Pages...............)
These scenes may remind one a bit of Athens, but above all, they certify and demonstrate Bernard Plossu's ability to rediscover himself again and again through and behind the places he visits, building a work constituted of fleeting but penetrating glances captured through his incessant movement. It is a work in motion, like time running without a present. This speed is the means to confront the emotion the photographer recognizes, points out, but tries to surpass and conceal. However, the world of photography is not motion but stillness. Thus, these fleeting moments of movement reconstruct a still reality that succinctly portrays a world full of contrasts, dominated by many sweet and tender details. The photographed world of Bernard Plossu consists of these intermediate scenes, exactly those that our eyes have not learned to distinguish and capture. And these scenes prove that behind the obvious or the indifferent lies a silent world, full of beauty, interest, and emotion.
Plato Rivellis