LOIC VIZZINI
Photo-reporter
China « A the meeting of the country dreamed »
PhotosHow to return account of a as vast and mixed country as China? Without knowing the country, its culture, even less its language, each one nourish however a representation of China through iconography which melts its myth for any Westerner. One thinks of the images of "postcard" which show the great landscapes, the bicycles in the cities, the multitude of crowd, the roofs in pagoda... One also calls upon the images of the photojournalism which testify to political repression, of the new face of China moving, pulled by a devastating expansion economic, a country which one describes between tradition and modernism, there are also the images which show superlative China, that of great work. Thus veiled what nourishes the glance of very with each one.
With the reading of the photographs of Loic Vizzini, one understands that his party taken was to get rid of all this imagery, to refuse it like locates in this unknown country, to raise the heavy curtain of the myth and to try to go to the meeting of the dreamed country. For that purpose, it seems to have approached China like an imaginary country, nourished by its own dreams of child. For this reason, It could endorse the teaching of Jean Grenier who in connection with India wrote "the important one is not to see India such as it is, according to Europeans or the Indians - it is an ambition absurdity besides. It is by it regarding as an imaginary country that one approaches more his reality ". The risk was however to lose itself, to be mislaid in the great outside of China, the infinite one of its landscapes. To guide its wander, Loïc Vizzini chose an origin Xi' year in the east of the country, a destination the desert of Taklamankan which has the appearance of Far West. Between the two points a feature on the chart which follows the road of silk. To the wire of his voyage, the photographer endeavoured to collect feelings, attitudes, glances, by trusting meetings randomly.
These meetings intervene as well in the space of the streets, on populeux markets, in the intimacy of the interiors, in places reserved for work, places rinsed by tourism of mass, in places far from all finally. Each photo watch of the scenes collected at the rate/rhythm of walk, in direct catch. The characters are in turn mountain dwellers with the engraved skin and in chapka, veiled Moslem women, workmen of the countryside, soldiers in goguette, Chinese tourists who will seek exoticism in the west of the country, of the actresses on a turning, urban young people equipped with the Westerner. Vis-a-vis with these characters, the photographer always adopts a distance right. Sometimes a discrete distance until A to be erased, sometimes faces taken with nearest. Other photographs, vacuums of presence, show mysterious landscapes which draw their magic from their insulation and of the time which seems suspended. The lake with water sinks at daybreak, the mosque lost in a village of Kyrgiz mountain, as many compose landscapes which have paces of end of the world. The magic is also found on other images which borrow from the universe of the surrealist ones. One thinks then of the photography which shows a character behind a tree, the suspended umbrella and which is devoted to a mysterious ritual or the scene of the soldiers who are caught mutually in photograph, all identical the ones to the others like the same geared down character, a true burlesque setting in abyme.
Elsewhere the glance is engaged more, it testifies in particular to the oppression which touches the ouigours. The dress hung with the nail symbolizes in a significant way the marginalized identity of these people. Other images account for the inhuman working conditions which touch the workmen of the countryside. This quasi exclavagism takes figure in the deadened body of this worker, recroquevillée on a bed, finding the rest once disencumbered of the burden of work. The oppression of which it is the object could nest in this cover in ball has its sides, full with the anguishes and cumulated tirednesses. The burden of work also for this employee who goes up has back of man of the toboggans at the top of a dune so that tourists can descend it with leisure. The assembly of the various fragments describes a narrative course. An instinctive glance, amused, engaged, poetic seizes China with human face, in all its diversity and its mixtures.
With the reading of the photographs of Loic Vizzini, one understands that his party taken was to get rid of all this imagery, to refuse it like locates in this unknown country, to raise the heavy curtain of the myth and to try to go to the meeting of the dreamed country. For that purpose, it seems to have approached China like an imaginary country, nourished by its own dreams of child. For this reason, It could endorse the teaching of Jean Grenier who in connection with India wrote "the important one is not to see India such as it is, according to Europeans or the Indians - it is an ambition absurdity besides. It is by it regarding as an imaginary country that one approaches more his reality ". The risk was however to lose itself, to be mislaid in the great outside of China, the infinite one of its landscapes. To guide its wander, Loïc Vizzini chose an origin Xi' year in the east of the country, a destination the desert of Taklamankan which has the appearance of Far West. Between the two points a feature on the chart which follows the road of silk. To the wire of his voyage, the photographer endeavoured to collect feelings, attitudes, glances, by trusting meetings randomly.
These meetings intervene as well in the space of the streets, on populeux markets, in the intimacy of the interiors, in places reserved for work, places rinsed by tourism of mass, in places far from all finally. Each photo watch of the scenes collected at the rate/rhythm of walk, in direct catch. The characters are in turn mountain dwellers with the engraved skin and in chapka, veiled Moslem women, workmen of the countryside, soldiers in goguette, Chinese tourists who will seek exoticism in the west of the country, of the actresses on a turning, urban young people equipped with the Westerner. Vis-a-vis with these characters, the photographer always adopts a distance right. Sometimes a discrete distance until A to be erased, sometimes faces taken with nearest. Other photographs, vacuums of presence, show mysterious landscapes which draw their magic from their insulation and of the time which seems suspended. The lake with water sinks at daybreak, the mosque lost in a village of Kyrgiz mountain, as many compose landscapes which have paces of end of the world. The magic is also found on other images which borrow from the universe of the surrealist ones. One thinks then of the photography which shows a character behind a tree, the suspended umbrella and which is devoted to a mysterious ritual or the scene of the soldiers who are caught mutually in photograph, all identical the ones to the others like the same geared down character, a true burlesque setting in abyme.
Elsewhere the glance is engaged more, it testifies in particular to the oppression which touches the ouigours. The dress hung with the nail symbolizes in a significant way the marginalized identity of these people. Other images account for the inhuman working conditions which touch the workmen of the countryside. This quasi exclavagism takes figure in the deadened body of this worker, recroquevillée on a bed, finding the rest once disencumbered of the burden of work. The oppression of which it is the object could nest in this cover in ball has its sides, full with the anguishes and cumulated tirednesses. The burden of work also for this employee who goes up has back of man of the toboggans at the top of a dune so that tourists can descend it with leisure. The assembly of the various fragments describes a narrative course. An instinctive glance, amused, engaged, poetic seizes China with human face, in all its diversity and its mixtures.