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Jean-François Rauzier’s Hyperphotos
Ever since finishing the Louis Lumière School, Jean-François Rauzier has continued his personal research, even while leading a career in advertising.
In 2002, his artistic photography takes an innovative turn when he invents the Hyperphoto.
Rauzier creates this concept which from then on defines the work to which he consecrates all his creative efforts.
Between installation and photography, the Hyperphoto is a digital re-composition of thousands of photos, natural or urban landscapes: a giant hyperrealist puzzle. His images, therefore “fabricated” on the computer, are exposed in very large format prints. Aside from their monumental size (Plage des Souvenirs is 20 meters long), the panoramic images of Jean-François Rauzier are recognized by the multitude of details within, fragments sometimes so miniscule that only a very meticulous observer will notice.
The prodigious depth of field that the Hyperphoto technique allows turns the captured instant into a realist painting. “My hyperphotos are the realization of an old dream that would be impossible without digital technology: to see the big picture and at the same time the close-up, to stop time and be able to examine all the details of the fixed image.”
The first Hyperphotos represent large panoramas of nature: Fields and crops, land modeled by human beings (Champ d’Orge, Colza) and bare landscapes (Fauteuil Solitaire), sometimes water scenes (Conference de Burano). Rauzier affirms his desire to create original compositions. However, the nature he reveals has nothing to do with the original, a paradox he himself underlines. It’s the opposite of savage: it’s soft, organized, composed.
The artist likes geometry: “The fields fascinate me by their calm regularity, the solid and appeasing rhythm they impose on the landscape.” Often a road snakes through the field compositions (Aller-retour, Champs du Soir, Epouvantials).
Man’s imprint is evident, especially that made by machines: cultivation, traces of vehicles crossing the barley.. Then comes the artist’s imprint: artificial colors, improbably skies.. Going beyond untouched, these landscapes are idealized, dreamed.
This is the paradox of Rauzier’s photos. The artificial takes over the natural. Even though, the sentiment of virginity clearly exists: this perfected nature, retouched beyond limits, becomes completely separated from reality until finally appearing pure, idyllic.
Jean-François Rauzier’s work can be divided into different cycles:
-The fairy-like ambiance of the first Hyperphotos becomes more and more evident.
-The purity fades, the more colored and sophisticated décors become darker.
-Anecdotes and humoristic details are multiplied. Looking at a hyperphoto becomes a game. One searches, looking for the artist’s hints sprinkled throughout the image, seeing a field mouse, a deer, a snail on a leaf. Amusing to find a woman’s undergarments behind a bale of hay (Péché Originel), or a bird staring at us…
The strange atmosphere in a composition like “Evasion” is a witness to Rauzier’s attachment to surrealism and the incongruous. In “Fauteuil Solitaire” one discovers an armchair sitting in the middle of a field. In “La Conference de Burano” the armchairs, many of them this time, float in the water. Who hung the birdcage on the branch of the lonely tree in the poppy field?
The artist’s interest for hardly seen details echoes his affinity for hidden objects and meanings. His images expose the unexplainable and irrational. References to mysteries, legends, and secrets reveal a tendency toward mysticism.
The “original sin” context and symbols appear often: the bitten apple, the snake. In “Commemoration” a small painting of the Virgin Mary suckling Jesus is placed at the bottom of a tree. The biblical references show a passion for myth and fable. In “Port Jerôme” (among others), he takes Alice from her wonderland and places her in his own universe just as wonderful, and worrisome. “Hiver in Versailles” evokes the passage of the Little Red Riding Hood. We find the wolf watching in the snowy forest and a lost red scarf on the white ground.
The Hyperphotos are enigmas for which we must reconstitute the story behind the scene. With the symbols being the narration tools and the details being the clues, Rauzier draws the paths to follow.
Waiting is another recurring theme that the artist treats clearly in “Souffle de Vérité”. In general, this sentiment is suggested by abandoned objects. Buckets, books, teddy bears, bicycles, etc. are there where someone must surely come by. While waiting, everything is immobile, time is suspended.
In “On Time” the artist expresses the same trepidation facing the passage of time, taking his revenge with humor by becoming its measure, the sundial. The grains of sand are replaced by a mass of used alarm clocks that “also are subject to the wear and tear of time and die useless.”
The desolated landscapes of “Bicyclettes Abandonnées” and “La mémoire de la mer” slip into a melancholy and poetry darkened by Rauzier’s mood. One feels danger near, a catastrophe about to arrive. Sometimes the disaster has already taken place (“Car Crash”) or is taking place then and there (“Le Retour de Steven”). The sweet harmony of “Barley Field” contrasts with the terrible chaos of “Tempête at Omaha Beach”.
This is the ambivalence found in the work of Jean-François Rauzier. It hesitates between classic harmonious beauty and an overt melancholic expression. It starts to reveal less smooth and unanimous images. His poet’s soul takes over with creations that are less evident, more disturbing, and infinitely rich. The work evolves little by little toward more and more sophisticated constructions. He enriches the imaginary in his Hyperphotos and develops the artificial. At the same time, he moves the center of interest from fields to cities. “For the past three years my work has been a form of introspection, like an initiation path, that now brings me to the giant urban landscapes of New York.”
In 2005, he creates the image “Liberté Surveillée”, a portrait of New York after September 11th. Among the details is the Statue of Liberty behind a fence, and the artist himself and his double, both with binoculars, evoking the theme of surveillance, control.
This is where Rauzier initiates the use of the auto portrait, the beginning of a new symbolic dimension of his work. His character in a black hat, coat, and sunglasses are now constantly present.
Sometimes it is the principal subject, such as in “On Time”. Planted in the center of the image, the artist is the master, leader of the enigma of the alarm clock beach. This silhouette of a modern witch, a prophet, a sentinel or guard, is repeated at different places in the image.
In “Dernières Nouvelles” he gives a press conference, seated at the same table as several of his clones. Multiplied, he gains force and imposes himself as a predicator. The scene is stressful and solemn; something important is being announced…
When the artist hides himself in his fictions, this constant presence inspires the same tension. He places himself at the heart of his “world images” as their grand instigator (“Bibliothèque Idéale).
Always in the mystical vain that haunts him, he plays with the assimilation between the creator (the artist) and the Creator (God). An ambiguous god since he is equally associated with destruction, of which one can imagine he is not only the announcer. His aura inspires danger and his apocalyptic style evokes the end that is coming (“Nuit d’Eté”) or a witness of a past catastrophe (“Terminus”, the “Babels”, “Cité Idéale”, “Cité-Taguée”).
In making himself a principal character of his Hyperphotos, Jean-François Rauzier attests to a kind of demiurge, grand architect and animator of the universe.
Mary Baldo