The photographer, member of the Objectif Image association, worked for two years on this new exhibition, now anchored at the Gazette Café until July 24. Story of a film of wandering in open water.
He’s quite a nice guy, François Salgas. By this customary modesty which characterizes him. Like (no pun intended of course) the photographic work produced by this hyperactive member of the Montpellier association Objectif image.
Proof: this time, we find it along the Lez, king river of Eastern Hérault for a non-animated variant of a road-movie (a wandering film in good French) between the near source of the watercourse and its aqueous union with our seafurther south, at the exit of the Palavasian canal.
Two years of work, 1,800 photos taken, twenty-six kept
Which, here, takes on the trappings of a mathematical formula: twenty-six kilometers, twenty-six stops, twenty-six images. At the very least what remains is a question of clichés. Because during the two years of necessary work, François Salgas pressed his shutter button a thousand and eight hundred times, between the end of autumn and the beginning of winter, two years in a row.
This is in addition to the identification, tracking and mapping work carried out upstream. Not to mention the more materialistic aspect of this descent into a more or less turbid element, between a suitable waterproof box to find, a sailing suit to put on, a fisherman’s overalls to put on or even fins and a whitewater swimming board to find and then master in order to be able to venture into certain sectors (sometimes less peaceful than it seems) of this waterway.
A work drawn from multiple inspirations
Moreover, upon arriving at Palavas, in a channel although swimming is prohibited, the man admits: “There, I struggled a bit to make this image”while showing a unique view of the Transcanal between two waters. Tumultuous at the moment.
Before getting there there is this reflection. Nourished by inspiration. That born from a workshop led by two friends from Objectif Image (Pierre Soyer, Jean-Michel Verdan). Then from an exhibition seen in Arles by Nicolas Floc’h. Or this work by a Japanese author carried out, here also along the water but from the ocean. There is, finally, the idea of a route “Afloat, sometimes underwater to compose my images with this notion of travel”. With, as a side note, this “water line” delimiting the bottom surface. A demarcation allowing the retina to be offered a unique view like a Graf’s frog or a gharial.
There is, also, this idea of the somewhat dreamlike documentary, without words or words. To tell of a river to which most of its human neighborhood has turned its back. Seeing in this moving vertebral column only an additional natural obstacle to overcome.
A dreamlike but also biological and faunal view of the river
Storyteller, François Salgas has made himself. And brings this evidence which has become invisible to many of his contemporaries: “I realized that wildlife disappears the closer we get to cities”. But also noted that the liquid element itself was not necessarily as polluted as one would be entitled to think.
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