I’m in Austria, finally starting my new project about primitivism: I can not totally explain what I’m looking for, but I think I definitively need to face a certain wildness, in the context of some old communities and their ritual… I have started with the Pechten and Wilder men in Austria. This project will take me in Hungary, Switzerland, East and South of France, Italy and Germany… I feel there is a part of myself dealing with the very codified uniforms of the Empire series, or the Chinese Opera costume, so elegant they are. And then, there is some space for this wildness too…also if the communities I have started to meet have also some complex systems, rituals, a wish to be. On the top of everything, the mask is totally hiding the face. No eyes appearing… Identity has to be found somewhere else. This week, while photographing these communities, I sometime felt that I was doing more a sculptural work than a photographic one… All these materials are fascinating me… Fur, bones. wooden masks… We’ll see.
