Photography isolates, captures a fragment, a moment from a succession of moments, and transforms it into an emblem. Similarly, a photographic portrait takes the features of a real person, isolates them, immobilises them and thus transforms them into a character that has as much relevance to the person portrayed as the photographer decides, while remaining recognisable.
In addition to isolating in time, photography can also unite in space: the photographer can insert different elements into the frame, contrasting or concordant depending on the meaning he wants to give to the image. Even a portrait can be composed by more or less arbitrarily juxtaposing the subject with a context that contradicts or reinforces it, or introduces dissonant notes that add ambiguity and multiple interpretations to the photograph.
The portraits I present in this small series, whether individual or group portraits, of friends or people I met by chance, are not the result of an organised project. They were taken here and there over the last few months, but they seem to me to share a slightly questioning air: suspended in the moment, photographed alongside incongruous objects or immersed in vaguely dissonant atmospheres, they seem to ask, ‘Why? What meaning will the photographer or the viewer attribute to my appearance?
