FRÉDERIC LEBAIN

ABOUT THE ARTIST

WORKS

ABOUT THE ARTIST

INTRODUCTION

Irasshaimase Yokohama, Nara, Tokyo. We come across gentle deer, multicolored plastic furnishings and adventure parks, barefoot men praying and the Japanese predilection for dyed hair. As far as this well-known picture of the island nation has come from the media, so have the clichés. However, Fréderic Lebain doesn’t want to denounce or confirm preconceptions with his photographs, but rather pay homage to this lifestyle in panoramas. His view goes further, veering into the esoteric and rapt in the skewed poetry of an old culture squeezed between conformity and capitalism. One could guess that being on the road is Fréderic Lebain’s main job. First, he travelled to New York, Lisbon and Turkey. Then, it was the numerous trips to Japan that fascinated the French photo artist. He brought back snapshots of everyday details, crystal clear and as if frozen in ice, that show a wide format image of Japan, one that seeks to negate all meditative purism. An “instant“ society presents itself as loud, amusing, and with explosive color, a society that can’t be outbid for celebrated artifice. Remainders of an ancient, advanced civilization appear lost between the indications of creeping childishness and absurd consumer behavior. And yet Lebain’s “Irasshaimase” series, which he presented this year at the venerable Rencontres photographiques in Arles, is in no way a biting critique on civilization, but first of all its own and thoroughly endearing survey of a foreign land and its particularities. The fragmentation of the subject underlines the latent disorientation and the spot-light nature of the pictures. The emotions and impressions are jumbled like slivers of a multicolored kaleidoscope until, at the end, an overall picture results that holds the balance between comic melancholy and clear alienation. The Professional on Vacation – “Holiday with Holga” On one of his numerous trips, Lebain discovered a quite special camera through a street hawker. The Holga 120SF, a cheap camera that has come to reach cult status amongst artists and professionals, is a marvel of simplicity made 100% out of plastic – including the lens. It comes out of the factory so flawed that black tape is included for the various light-bleeding cracks. In contrast to the high-tech equipment of today’s generation, the Holga leads photography back to its roots. It captures a mood rather than reproducing an accurate image – and is therefore the purest in analog photography. Lebain’s series, “Holiday with Holga”, that arose from four years in America and Europe, is also a documentation of the longing for simplicity and the appetite for chance. “It’s more important to have a good picture idea than perfect execution,” says the professional photographer who was awarded with the influential “Attention Talent 2001” Prize of the French company Fnac. With their flaws and haziness, the prints invite one to embark on extensive voyages of discovery. Reflections of numbers and circles, blank voids, and multicolored light leaks on the edges, that otherwise are mostly black and fuzzy, mix into the picture and remind the viewer that something decisive lies between the reality and the reproduction. The camera, as the cause of these flaws, imposes itself upon the image. “With the Holga one can still make picture that truly reflect their author,” he adds - placing stronger demands upon the photographers as well as their interpreters. Dr. Boris von Brauchitsch