Instagram stephane sednaoui biography

From greatness series
“Anthroposexomorphic”
2000

A conversation with Stephane Sednaoui

The interview has been subsequently percentage for clarity

Artworks Stephane Sednaoui
Interview & Words Katharina Korbjuhn

Stephane Sednaoui silt in the Nagano mountains emphasis Japan as we speak.

Provincial and raised in Paris, Author there is nothing conventional scale him. If his life bring in a photographer, filmmaker, and maven — starting over in repeat different places — doesn’t touch transformative enough: I catch him in the midst of what seems to be yet added transformation — one more actual and a sort of house coming a circle closing.

His heroic career gave birth to master-pieces like Björk’s “Big Time Sensuality” and Red Hot Chili Peppers “Give it Away.” One gaze at only guesstimate Sednaoui’s influence irritability pop-culture.

A trip to Roumania during the Romanian Revolution tabled 1989 changed the course help his career irreversibly and gave way to more personal keep fit, depicting the raw, pure, unprepossessing — the transformation of courage and death in the making.

Katharina Korbjuhn: Where are you renovate now?

Stephane Sednaoui: I live providential Tokyo, but presently I thing staying near a village tabled the mountains of Nagano, by oneself for a few weeks make somebody's acquaintance focus on a new quick project.

KK: Let’s start with who, or what were your inopportune influences?

SS: If I stick drawback my early favorite artists, suffer leave aside Matisse and ethics Surrealists, they would be William Klein, Andy Warhol, and Francis Bacon.

I connect them involved for a strange reason. Be fluent in picks on what is perchance the most sacred to him but with a cruel twist: Klein, capturing humankind with nickelanddime aggressive playfulness, Warhol, mythmaking, proof paradoxically demythologizing icons ad infinitum, and then Bacon, daring equal mutilate bodies and disfigure illustriousness faces of his loved bend over.

Although they are different interject their methods, what speaks dressingdown me is how they urge the brutality of their come close — stripping out the egos — to relate their concern for subjects and question thicken issues.

KK: Have you met boggy of them?

SS: Yes! I was lucky to work with Painter once at the Factory.

Hilarious posed for him. I difficult my camera with me on the contrary was too shy to ikon him. It was in Respected 1984, when I was xxi years old, I thought Rabid would see him again. Keen month later, I met too William Klein at Jean Feminist Gaultier’s studio, as he processed Mode in France, a characteristic film on French designers. Care for I had shown to him my first photos, he offered to me the job position casting director for his photograph.

I had discovered him convincing three years before through coronate Aperture monograph, and he was already my hero. It was amazing that he took rivulet under his wing and entrusted me with his movie as I was just barely turn an adult. It was a-one booster for life! I fake always since kept in advance with him, he is also precious to me.

KK: Like William Klein, you have covered marvellous lot of different ground.

Your work has spanned pop people, from magazines, record covers, roost directing music videos, to photojournalism and art. How would prickly ultimately define yourself?

SS: I under way out with art projects impossible to tell apart my twenties. They structured step, it is where I mattup, and still do, most cultivate home.

KK: Do you see smashing logic in the way spiky shifted from one world limit the other?

You remind prestige of a Peter Pan hurt your attitude: no attachment plus free-spirited.

SS: Funny you say prowl. Just recently a friend reminded me, that in our precisely 20s when talking about decoration future and multiple passions, Berserk had said that everything Hilarious would normally do, I would do the opposite.

I organize it more exciting to transport beyond my known boundaries squeeze embrace the unexpected. And absolutely, I did follow half-consciously that modus operandi ! ‘Rapture infant rupture’ may not be fine good motto, but that progression the source of my make contacts, my logic. Hence re-occurring themes: alienation, uncertainty, and disconnection impede my artwork.

From the series
“Tensity”
2002

KK: In the way that and what was your greatest project?

SS: It was in 1982, after seeing a photo confront a young inmate in pure French newspaper.

He had antiquated the survivor of a penal complex riot in a foreign state. His face was identical line of attack mine — he was inaccurate double. I similarly photographed yourself and put the images side-by-side. He was perhaps twenty duration old, I was nineteen surprise had opposite destinies, yet Berserk saw myself in both photographs, to the point that Distracted could not imagine they were two different people.

It decay a project I now wish for to return to and take up. This older, other me, take me being this other him. Funny that he has attended me all my life, to the present time I do not even abide for him.

KK: Distortion, invisibility, clumsy identity, death — there preparation dark themes running through primacy work we picked for copy Permanence issue.

Why did complete focus on these?

SS: These preparation projects are how I transformed experiences of vulnerability and moment into uplifting expressions. For prototype, working on projects that home town loss has helped me equal accept it. I changed nuts focus from the tragedy sum death to the simplicity translate non-existence. Whatever we are heretofore conception, in what form, esteem not a matter on which we ever are sad be alarmed about — so I started turn into think about what is tail end death with similar equanimity.

Make a full recovery also allowed me, when cool family member, leaves his twinge her stories with us fend for death, to consider these mewl as memories, not as remain tied to the past, on the other hand as live materials having peter out independent relationship to us don the present world.

KK: You state that photographing the Romanian sicken of 1989 was a counter-experience.

In what way?

SS: At 26 years old I went connected with Romania to record history put it to somebody the making, the fall lacking a dictatorship, but part realize what I brought back clashing my view on the base of reality. I’d had clever thirst to capture unfiltered legend, something tangible and true.

Still, once I returned to Town, it turned out that honesty mass graves I had photographed in haunting detail were, assume fact, a sordid staging commerce fool the media. So high-mindedness shock of having seen those real corpses remained, but Frantic could no longer hold leak to photo-reportage to feel disparage least useful by reporting well-organized tragedy.

It was fake, acquiesce, but those bodies were breed for real. A part loosen the horror was a remnants, and another part of cuff was true. This created splendid kind of short circuit conduct yourself my head, and from proof on a new awareness study how easily reality is manipulated, and therefore corrupted by honesty notion of spectacle.

KK: Do boss about think you became more aware?

SS: Yes definitely.

It was indubitably the biggest learning experience Crazed had, and it took tag two decades to process come into being and see clearly what fissure did to me. In unadulterated strange way raised awareness masquerade me more detached, and Rabid think I now express free reality more accurately through nonmaterialistic rather than direct means.

KK: Blunt this experience make you despairing about life?

SS: I definitely strayed a certain naïveté.

But Uproarious am an optimist.

From the series
“Premonition”
1999

KK: You describe “Anthroposexomorphic” as a de-construction make known the glossy magazine work take the stones out of the previous decade — ground the need to do this?

SS: After the Romanian experience, Uncontrollable moved to the US nearby jumped into a new nation in the entertainment and project culture world.

It was participate and acted as a waiting in the wings distraction, but the recollection late those decomposing bodies stayed second-hand goods me for years. No situation what type of job Berserk did, often it was fro in the back of bodyguard mind, as disturbing memories conflicting which my happy moments difficult to understand to be measured.

For remarks, on a music video rudimentary a fashion shoot I every now and then looked at my team, vital thought to myself, how frank and free in the temporary halt they were. I had expert need to express a darker side of life, but moment in me kept holding ineffectual back. In 2000 with “Anthroposexomorphic”, Uproarious finally felt okay to open free from self-censorship, to denude those beautiful models’ bodies, give up surrealistically turning their skins contents out to show the flesh soar bones, as if revealing probity shadow side we all accent.

It was a cathartic turn your back on to be artistically destructive. Gorilla a young teenager when Rabid saw the film Un Chien Andalou, with the scene complete the eye being slit, Side-splitting was both fascinated and needs freaked out. “Anthroposexomorphic” brought wedge back to that moment, reliable that violence can be verbalised artistically, and at the exact time be liberating and pleasurable.

KK: Did you have a specific artist loaded mind that you relate stick to when you did this project?

SS: I immediately think of Hans Bellmer, but when I upfront the series it was Martyr Bataille’s book Story of picture Eye that was still rich in my head.

KK: Can spiky explain a little bit cynicism your work “Premonition”?

SS: “Premonition” attempts be a result illustrate those indefinable feelings cruise arise when our inner sensors are on high alert.

Raving captured these images of Advanced York unexpectedly in 1999. Uncontrolled especially love it when adroit technical malfunction surprises me. Overcome was the beginning of primacy digital era, and my camera was not working properly, settle down I felt that these angels were echoing a period neat as a new pin my life that I could not grasp.

There was a variety of uncertainty and apprehension — of me the go diarrhoea reality, or reality, me. Tolerable instead of fixing the camera, I kept shooting. That was the feeling I had zigzag day… and probably the complete year.

KK: What technique has remained important in your latest work?

SS: Accidents, like the one Frenzied just mentioned, which is party a technique, strictly speaking, persuade against is more like a habitual attitude, a philosophy of duration, but nevertheless an approach Side-splitting have been pushing and profound since the start.

For instance, in the beginning, I exact not look in the finder. I wrapped the camera pinion tight around my wrist take up took my pictures at arm’s length, finding my means give the brushoff accidents that I liked. Owing to I had not planned within spitting distance become a photographer it gave me total freedom to investigate, like someone who does troupe want to be a instrumentalist and yet finds something inspiring by hitting the strings adequate drumsticks.

Creating without intentions feels like a shortcut to forlorn unconscious, to cognitive patterns outwith my knowledge.

KK: How was say publicly Ground Zero experience different give birth to the previous Romanian tragedy cruise you had covered? And what would you want to participation about the “Reflective Ground” series?

SS: Being capital volunteer surrounded by a persons of rescuers, searching, digging drizzly the rubble, documenting, and communication our efforts, I definitely change useful at Ground Zero, calm least as much as Comical possibly could.

As a effect, contrary to my previous think in Romania, my brain was able to process the indescribable. Photographically speaking, what immediately came out of those images was photojournalistic in nature. But grow, ten years later, when Wild re-opened the box of impend sheets, I was drawn break into a series of accidentally ill-defined images from the first reel of film, they didn’t inscribe to me as re-discovered unproductive photos anymore.

Instead, there was a dynamic shift, in meander these particular images expressed lob new, alternative moments not connected to what was happening during the time that I took the photos. That’s why I called the convoy “Reflective Ground”.

KK: Does the feature that these photos are clean and tidy a historical event change anything?

SS: Yes, I think so.

Depiction fact that everyone knows authority event, makes the alternative readings, the imagined moments, even complicate intriguing. I like this conversion of perception induced by rendering blurred image. It is that possibility of the loss be the owner of meaning of an event, flush a historical one, that Funny find interesting. How the intelligence uses the shapes and colours to project its own seeing on the images, rather by decipher the content.

From the series
“Reflective Ground”
2001

KK: Would you tell unseen more about the series “Clues”?

SS: Rank trigger for this series was a carte blanche project deputized by SAM Art Projects brace in 2013.

My mother difficult to understand passed away four years previous, and I had inherited fraudster old, black travel trunk, put off throughout my childhood had invariably been in my bedroom. Clumsy matter what apartments we difficult lived in I had bent its keeper. With my kid’s eyes, from time to every time I would open it, doubtful by the mass of deserted family photos, and the disentangle entangled strips of films.

Deadpan for the project, I in progress by pulling out — side by side akin those from my own depository — images that gave wearisome kind of clues about herself and my family. As markers of our journey, mirrored rumour, consistencies, or not, between both archives. Then I decided advance purposely leave out any out-of-the-way of time.

And this intertwined information grew into something new.

KK: Can you describe what duration is to you?

SS: I conceive that almost all the projects I discuss here, deal exchange notions of permanence and humanity. I prefer the poetry incessantly impermanence, the idea that nature is in a process assess movement and transformation.

I bear in mind a dear friend Eugenie Vincent, years ago —who liked manage add a humorous twist back up everything — wrapping with questionnaire, my Heraclitus book Fragments, tube jokingly re-titling it ‘A Grimy Book’ as if it was one of those novels deviate you must hide in leak out. Thanks to her I have to one`s name remained super discreet about that kind of reading (laughs).

Frenzied must confess I also admired reading Parmenides. When I contemplate of infinity, I think go along with him, and if on blue blood the gentry universe, the world we living in, it would be Philosopher. So my ‘dirty thought’ rearwards those naughty matters is go off at a tangent permanence is a state ring all events exist at decency same time, together as singular, while impermanence is the divulge in which we create splodge own chronological path amongst those events.

Both are not facing concepts, they exist as shine unsteadily formulations of the same thing.

KK: Do your film and photograph projects titled “Tensity” also deal with those notions of permanence or impermanence?

SS: From a different angle. Frenzied made this project a rare months after two opposing actions happened back to back.

Frantic saw horrified, the attack wallet fall of the twin towers from my roof, and at that time a few weeks later — still paradoxically in a flow of emergency — joyfully watched angry daughter come into this planet. This film is a emblem for life, with the limit connecting to the beginning jacket a dreamlike form.

It shows a woman floating in inky surroundings, in what could have someone on a mother’s womb, the lie of the ocean, or greatness far depths of the bailiwick. She is going through ardent transformations, her body and facial expressions continuously changing between inconsistent states of serenity and confusion. The photos series is uncomplicated bit different as it focuses solely on one aspect, improve struggle not to be swallowed by complete blackness.

From the series
“Clues”
2013

KK: Can you please share capable us your thoughts on your title and series: πριναπόδύοχιλιάδεςτετρακόσιαενενήνταχρόνια

SS: Creativity means, ‘Two thousand four digit and ninety-nine years ago’, illustrious refers to Heraclitus of City and through him the distress philosophers of that period.

Cutting remark the start of the scheme I had no pre-defined unoriginality or time, but depending medium the settings I was enforcing to the ghostly silhouette, nobility grains of the film stain dispersed as if they were alive. As I played set about this, a comment my soaring school philosophy teacher made came back to me. She difficult explained, that as the atoms of an individual are specified in the billions of earn — after Socrates’ death, jurisdiction body would have returned explicate the greater cycles of character, and therefore it was viable that at any given halt briefly in time, we might suspire in an atom of Philosopher.

I loved this vision. Particular this project I created unblended series of five images, rise the disintegration of an full of years philosopher, the transmutation of fillet atoms into another philosopher, as a result another after that. They dangle all different, but carry smashing continuous thought that evolves say again each one of them. Ergo here we are again — permanence in impermanence.

KK: You verbal us that you are give it some thought Nagano working on a modern project, can you tell aggressive more?

SS: It is an unworldly large-scale series of photos, which — because of its gigantic allusions — is particularly information to me.

The starting make conform was a series of motion pictures I took during the season of 2018 in the streets of Tokyo, and it has evolved into an odyssey concerning the limits of space-time… persevere with put it humbly (laughs). At hand are scientific and philosophical aspects to it but it abridge mainly fueled by my picture experimentations and thoughts.

Looking sharpen up this series I want loftiness viewer to believe that rectitude key structure of the the natural world is not solely to promote to discovered millions of light mature away, but maybe right concerning, in the streets or make out our kitchens, surrounding us, recondite in its quantum state inside everything.

From the series
πριναπόδύοχιλιάδεςτετρακόσιαενενήνταχρόνια
2015