Laurent Villeret in residence in the Gaspé (2013)
Laurent Villeret discovered photography in his high school’s black-and-white photo lab. A graduate of École nationale supérieure Louis-Lumière, he began his career in aerial photography in Dubai.
RESIDENCY: “LES HÉLIOTROPES”
Paris (France) | florasimages.com
A cofounder, in 2002, of the collective Dolce Vita, today he works in Paris and divides his activities as a freelance photographer among newspapers, advertising and communications, while his personal works are exhibited on a regular basis. He’s developed his photographic world around the project “Les Héliotropes” (Heliotropes) for the last 10 years. A sort of timeless journey with the help of a Polaroid to produce some poetic little papers.
In his personal work, the esthetic meets documentary methodology, making for an approach in which the photographer demonstrates that suggestion can lead us to see more than evidence can, in which the paper and process used are an integral part of the procedure. His work has been distributed by the cooperative Picturetank since 2007.
RESIDENCY PROJECT IN THE GASPÉ IN 2014: “LES HÉLIOTROPES”
“The journey is an elsewhere, not necessarily distant, but inescapably outside our everyday lives. The relationship with time undergoes a modification, be it flagrantly or imperceptibly. I look for the process that will best enable me to convey that emotion. The Polaroid transfer on watercolor paper turns out to be the answer to my questions. My photos become altered, slightly deteriorated, prints of a timeless dimension.
“‘Les Héliotropes,’ a project begun in 2002, tackles the question of territory, of plans made for it, of its appropriation, its development, as well as of its limits – all this while taking the form of a travel diary in a poetic world. The territories I’ve passed through, I’ve come back with the same desire to question the place of man in that complex geography where notions of borders and the infinite intermingle.
“It’s in that spirit that I wish to travel through the Gaspé during the winter of 2014: a winter’s journey that will make up chapter 7 of ‘Héliotropes.’”
Laurent Villeret
RECENT OR SIGNIFICANT SOLO EXHIBITS
2012
- “Les Héliotropes,” Les Promenades photographiques de Vendôme, Vendôme, France
- “Les Héliotropes,” chapter 5. Mois de la photo-OFF, Paris, France
- “Mosgorod,” Ruarts Gallery, Moscow, Russia
RECENT OR SIGNIFICANT GROUP EXHIBITS
2013
- Festival itinéraire des photographes voyageurs (Traveling Festival of Traveling Photographers), Galerie Le 69, Bordeaux, France
2012
- Polamania Festival POLA, Paris, France
2004
- “In-Ex,” collective exhibit in the streets of Tartus, Syria (artist residency)
PUBLICATIONS
2011
- “Les Héliotropes,” in Zmâla, No. 3, September 2011
2008
- Portfolio, Muse magazine, April 2008