LAMPPOSTS by Emilie Bitauld
The Lampposts series, initially Street Lights Series, has arisen from the journeys I have taken since I was 18 years old. Without telling anyone, I organized my passport and left Brittany to experience my dream of Morocco. I can thus say that it was not inspired by the masterful Urban lights of Chris Bruden. Since the start of my journey and in the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, I photographed these lampposts aimed to one day produce something artistic out of it. In the quest for a sense of globalism, in agreement with the concept of Edouard Glissant, I wanted to travel while being young and in great shape to live and work in the style of the inhabitants. So, I made the difficult choice to suspend my artistic practice for a while to work in international development. Thanks to the Lampposts series, I was able to photograph in around thirty countries.
After twenty years of traveling and sensing the world, I feel ready to share this series as a complete “witness”.
The choice of the materials and the technical medium; as this series haunted me for a long time, I said to myself that simplicity was suitable for the job and made the radical choice of pursuing primarily and entirely representational work. Besides a landscape, I took my time to choose a particular canvas. Its modernity contrasts with the choice of the motive, which could seem extremely classic at first sight. The series was initially intended for printing, and I have chosen this one for its sharp technical properties: lightweight, flame retardant, anti-reflective, and anti-curling, while adding attractive qualities and, in particular, work with it while moving. I associate it with the liquitex acrylic paint because it offers me a short drying time and good transportability. The smooth aspect of this technical medium is convenient to the extent of water which is regularly on my photos and the skies of these often low-angle shot pictures. As the series is primarily hyper-realistic, I like the idea to give a wink in “The work of art at the time of the technical reproducibility, by Walter Benjamin, like a snake which bites its own tail.
The shape: on the formal plan, I am interested in the main lines that draw in the space, sometimes restructuring the landscape.
This work sometimes makes a distance, taking possession of spaces in volume by the line made by Krijn de Koning, who I also love for his imaginary architecture on photos of glaucous urban spaces. It is not the only game that the lines of the Lampposts series suggest to the spectator. Untitled 5 (or Graphic Copenhaguen) enlightens the choice of a grey or blue sky. In Untitled 2 (or Alexandria Donkey town), for example, the real star is not a lamppost but the shade of the lamppost. The photo gives the impression of being intentionally poorly centered, for the better, to restore the appearance of the chaotic streets of the city (car and Funeral tent cut). In reality, this approximate centering points to the central figure of the series: here, the shade of a horizontal lamppost is situated in the foreground. If we push the riddle further, the composition shows itself: the extremity of this one continues by the vertical stem of the second, whose head leads us to the horizontal stem supporting paintings and lamps of the evening funeral wake.
Mockery, I have to admit, that I was also pleased to bring an essentially European audience to read this painting first from left to right, then from right to left. The bottom: The subject itself, the lamppost, seems to me strangely mysterious. As a question mark in the landscape, it is so familiar to us that we do not see it anymore. This is particularly true during the daytime. In the moments when we can wonder, it is not the lamppost who looks at us.
Moreover, are the cameras not fixed to them more frequently? This is the case in the Chinese Untitled 7 (or Quindao’s stars on a summer day). This series allowed me, in this way and others, to make my own Nina Simone’s reflection concerning the fact that the artist must be the reflection of their time. Robert Rauschenberg said otherwise: “The artist’s job is to be a witness to his time in history.” From the Thai Tsunami to the recycling of Hutongs of Beijing, From the disappearance of the Ottoman districts of Egypt to the rise of Danish taste and design. I call on to the street furniture to become a character in the landscape, to testify as a witness. If our eyes and brains become used to seeing it, what is the point of looking at the lamppost, or by extension, all that surrounds us? This series can also be interpreted in the broader sense as an invitation to become just like my lampposts, contemplative witnesses.
Emilie Bitauld, Loudun, June 2017