Georges Rousse

Hello all -

 

Not sure of where to post this, I thought that the philosophy section was probably best as this man

really

does some amazing work that makes you think......so here you go forum, make what you will of the

master that I believe this man to be.

 

I did a search of photo.net and found that Georges Rousse only pops up once, buried in a discussion

about favorite photographers and with no examples of his work.

 

I have just got back from a trip in France and spent a day in Arles, where I was pleased to find that in

the

museum opposite our hotel there was an exhibition of Georges Rousse, a photographer I was aware of,

but whose work I had only ever seen in books (and once, a large print in a Paris law firm, which was

quite

stunning). So we paid our euros and went in.

 

Rousse makes installations and then photographs them - the photo being the final "art-work".

Alongside a

large exhibit of past work, there were about four photographs that he had made at the museum (Musee

Reattu, Arles) and the installations were still in place. I attach here four photos of one installation - the

final one being the picture taken from the intended spot, showing the final work. These were taken on

my

girlfriends little IXUS - I have one from my SWC which is nice. I think GR uses a 5x4. I will also show

another installation he did and my pic of it (I don't like the "words" so much, but pretty impressive -

again

they were taken on the IXUS)

 

He seems hard to find on the web, but there is a pretty good gallery here, which was the only site to

show

much of what he does on the web. The prints are large (a meter square plus) and beautiful - at first

they

look photoshopped, then the light bulb clicks in your head and you see the beauty of it.

 

first a link (to come back to after you have seen the pics below)

 

http://www.rousseprojectdurham.com/

 

RX<div></div>

zooming out a little......<div></div>

a little more context<div></div>

the final effect - please bear in mind this is taken by GR with a view camera and looks far far

better than this quick effort of mine.<div></div>

here is another example showing what seems to be his recent departure into using words -

his actual pictures of course are uncanny whereas mine look a bit cheap really - it just looks

like he has dropped some PS text on top of the photo. I don't go for this so much, but it is

still quite amazing to see it.<div></div>

Robert, I agree with you that much of Georges Rousse's work has a depth and spell that makes it very beautiful. I think we will see more and more artists that work on the merging of various more traditional artistic forms of expression, installations one of them, and prolong the creative proces in photos and even photoshop. Interesting developments that we also will see more and more of on PN.

<p>Think of the conic shape that is formed whenever a camera lens is positioned. Normally the content (light, image) moves from the open end of the cone, towards the lens, and into the camera, and the image is collected.</p><p>Here, the photographer has pushed content - and concept - in the opposite direction, projecting onto the scene with total precision and awareness of photographic and visual process. The final image can only be integrated when both perspectives (projection, collection) are considered.</p><p>Very interesting work.</p>

I checked out the Durham Project link as well. His work is amazing.

 

Cheers...John.

His play on spatial depth reminds me of the work of John Pfahl, a great landscape

photographer who does similar somewhat installation-based photographs. I would

recommend checking him out.