Bio

Gérard Staron was born in 1962 in Alger. He grew up in France surrounded by the works of his great-uncle Henry Caillet, a painter from the early 20th century.

 At the end of 2013, after 23 years in IT, he decided to fully invest himself in photography. From 2014 to 2023, he participated in numerous national and international events.

In 2020 he led a workshop on the construction of a series in visual photography at the Château de l’Hom photography center in Gaillac.

Artist statment

Gérard Staron questions the perception of reality through the photographic medium.

Due to its mechanical process where human intervention is limited, photography is generally attributed the following properties:

Photography, proof of reality:

In 1945, André Bazin wrote in Ontology of the Photographic Image: “The originality of photography compared to painting therefore lies in its essential objectivity. Thus, the group of lenses that constitutes the photographic eye substituted for the human eye is precisely called “the objective”. For the first time, between the initial object and its representation, nothing is interposed but another object. For the first time, an image of the external world is formed automatically without creative intervention by man, according to a rigorous determinism. The personality of the photographer only comes into play through the choice, the orientation, the pedagogy of the phenomenon; however visible it may be in the final work, it does not appear there in the same way as that of the painter”. “The aesthetic virtualities of photography lie in the revelation of reality. This reflection in the wet sidewalk, this gesture of a child, it was not up to me to distinguish them in the fabric of the external world; only the impassivity of the lens, by stripping the object of habits and prejudices, of all the spiritual filth with which my perception coated it, could make it virgin to my attention and therefore to my love. “

According to Roland Barthes, in “La chambre claire”, photography is the only system of representation to have a “necessarily” real referent. Unlike painting and literature, which, for their part, only have a “facultatively” real or chimerical referent. “In Photography, I can never deny that the thing has been there”, writes Barthes, thereby laying the foundations of his concept, the “it-has-been”. According to Barthes, photography is the tangible trace of an object, which has come to leave its imprint on the sensitive surface, thanks to the rays of light emanating from its body. Roland Barthes considers photography as an integral recording of reality, as a tracing that would perfectly restore its referent. He then argues that it functions as a document attesting to what has been. Or when photography is defined as “proof” of reality or a “certificate of authentication”

Photography, image of the moment:

“A photograph is for me the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the meaning of a fact on the one hand and, on the other, of a rigorous organization of visually perceived forms which express this fact,” wrote Cartier-Bresson.

With the invention of photography, the time to create an image was considerably reduced compared to painting. While it was still long enough not to freeze the movement in the early days, the invention of the shutter and the evolution of emulsions made it possible to freeze the moment to a tiny fraction of a second.

The photographic image would therefore be the impression of a scene at a precise moment, the choice of this moment to represent the scene being the decisive moment.

break free of the structure :

Gérard Staron seeks to transcend these two concepts arising from the mechanical use of the photographic process.

Exit the truth photo and the decisive moment. The subject is no longer what is photographed but what is shown.

If the painter can directly express his unconscious on the canvas, the photographer is a prisoner of the mechanical process. To express what he is looking for, Gérard Staron will therefore use the unconscious of the spectator who will then interpret the image he has before his eyes.

To get us to follow him, Gérard Staron calls upon our cultural and social references to bring appearances to life, through our cognitive biases.

In his photographs, Gérard Staron plays with the senses, the image’s meaning and the sense of the viewer.

This approach allows for the construction of more universal images and initiates a dialogue between the author and the public.

Photography is a game: taking the viewer where they want to go, thwarting expectations or provoking them, sharing emotions, playing with processes, playing with oneself and others.

Influences :

For formalism : Raymond Depardon, Bernd et Ille Becher, Bernard Plossu

For the approach : Jeff Wall, Stephen shore, Joan Fontcuberta, Andreas Gursky, Taryn Simon