Mathieu Pernot, Ligne de mire

Ligne de mire

Mathieu Pernot

Publisher
GwinZegal
Year
2013
ISBN
9782953792669
Specifications
22 × 32 cm
24 pages

In the middle of summer, on a Sunday early in the afternoon, a man approaches, with a sledgehammer in his hand, the bunker wedged between the beach where vacationers are relaxing, and the café-restaurant where families who have come from the surrounding area are finishing their lunch to enjoy the sunshine. We are somewhere on the north coast of Brittany. A row of concrete blocks obstructs the bunker's old loophole, a relic of the Second World War. The man delivers a first blow with a sledgehammer to assess the resistance of this wall which separates him from the interior of the bunker, the target of his strange ballet. He strings together regular strikes to clear a sufficient path and slip into the privacy of the bunker. The scene intrigues, and a few daring people approach to inquire about the object that is causing the strange behavior of the one who does not yet appear in his photographer attributes. The task turns out to be tough. However, the concrete blocks eventually gave way under the photographer's insistence. The interior of the bunker is dark. The photographer begins the second stage of the process and, using a large brush, begins to cover the walls and ceiling with a layer of white paint. To transform the bunker into a camera obscura, the purpose of this entire operation, the photographer locks himself inside the building, blocking the opening he has just made with a panel in which only a tiny orifice, less than a centimeter in diameter, lets in a beam of light. It is the latter which allows the landscape which is located outside the bunker, in the axis of the small orifice, to be projected onto the opposite wall in an inverted image. The photographer then completes the last step in the darkness of the bunker: using a camera, he records this ephemeral image, which is superimposed on the wall support on which it is displayed. This edition benefits from the support of the National Center for Visual Arts, Ministry of Culture and Communication.

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