Galerie Claude Lemand

CLAUDE MOLLARD, FACES TO FACES, PHOTOGRAPHS.

Claude Mollard, Faces to Faces.

I iden­tify, in the suf­fering nature, traces of ter­ri­fied faces due to the vio­lence that men do to them: burning wood, pol­lute water, the wastes of con­sumerism. Nonetheless, these can also reveal the won­ders of nature by the screams of joy, which embody the beauty of the human faces. Between screams of suf­fering and joy, the con­trast is amazing.

I dis­cov­ered Origene for the first time in an antique marble quarry on the island of Paros, in the Cyclades, where the first sculp­tors mod­eled the stone into a man’s face, unless I dis­cov­ered them for the first time on the flanks of the Stromboli vol­cano, emerging from a union of fire and sea on the Eoliennes islands, or maybe it was among the ruins of Pompeii, or in Brazil’s exu­berant nature. Since then, I see them every­where. They scream, they laugh, they mock, and they have feel­ings like humans. “Ev­ery­thing is alive, every­thing has a soul”, Victor Hugo was not far from thinking that God was hiding nature’s nooks and cran­nies. Men, mon­sters or gods arrived on earth long before us. Men, mon­sters or gods, indeed, they are not very wise.

Translated from French by Marianne Coadou.