Fotograf Magazine

Are We? (Sommes-nous?), a publication which offers a personal but also a global account, is the result of team thought inscribed within a politically engaged attitude towards society. Whilst the collective works and the photographers’ worldly experiences serve as a basis, Tendance Floue is now taking the questioning made in its previous publications a step further with a new point of view and new ideas. In Paris, Mumbai, Buenos Aires, Los Angeles, the North Pole and elsewhere, our different outlooks have been shaped by our personal and political concerns. We have questioned current events and our impressions have been partly influenced by History. Faces, odd encounters, urban landscapes and desolate wastelands have become the life and soul of our photography. Man is faced with the disquieting environment he himself created and to which he endlessly tries to give meaning. He is pushed back by nature and overwhelmed by its almighty magnitude. As different worlds meet in serious or ironic circumstances, contrasts suddenly appear, and the question ”Are We?” remains unanswered. The book is like a long sentence of photographs which can be read as words. As for the exhibition, it has been organised around new combinations of pictures, creating a chronology which is different but which is nonetheless close to the book’s narrative as well as being in harmony with the exhibition space.

Excerpt from a text by Jean Baudrillard written for the book Sommesnous? (Naïve Edition and Jean Di Sciullo Edition, Paris, 2006): Ultimately there is a kind of philosophy behind this ”tendency”. Behind the ”blur” (”flou¹”), lies the intuition that it is impossible for one to grasp reality in full focus but also that it is impossible to capture the world in its fluidity, transience, and inaccuracy – and thus be a true witness. This is about capturing movement, the mode of apparition, in a sort of anamorphose and improvisation. In 2007, the book Sommes-nous? won the prestigious ”Infinity Award” from the New York Center of Photography (ICP).

Tendance Floue, french photographers collective