Mémoires d’Outre-Terre

François Delandre’s photographic itinerary gives one to see that photography neither reveals nor paints reality, but transforms and transfigures it. This detaching of elements, of buildings, of landscapes, transforms them into timeless sculptures, objects captured and offered for our contemplation as visual creations, strange and aesthetic works of art, suspended in time.

The patina of time is provided by transparences, by half-lights, variations of blacks and whites, by marks and scratches inscribed into the image itself. As in an illuminated manuscript, these scratchings link photography to other arts such as engraving and drawing.

These memories of “far-off” lands bring us the poetic calligraphy of a regard, lead us to where all is repose, silence and serenity.

Marie-Christine Labat