FREDERIC MARTIN
INNER CITY BLUES
Inner City Blues is a journey backwards; the return to a shattered city in search of traces of childhood, a wander through places which will never be the same again but which remain immutable. So I decided to come back, to rediscover this deep melancholy that inhabited me at the time.
Inner City Blues is also a still journey. It’s an escape into my memories, while life takes care of making them disappear from my memory, to find them again and keep them as they are.
It is finally a journey into the memory of Clermont-Ferrand, the memory of an industrious city, the black of the stones, the clouds and the deserted streets; places full of those I knew and I loved there and who have since disappeared.
Frederic Martin | photographer
Clumsy as I am, from the images of Frederic Martin, I initially only retained their very classic style: black & white, with a lot of grain and vignetting.
Then another aspect appeared to me, this grainy appearance of the images decontextualizes them, making them icons. He then explains to me not to put cars or advertisings in the image, nor anything that allows them to be placed in time. They have the texture of childhood memories, which are not yet ordered by the logical mind of the adult. Certain images, poor and enigmatic, surface, here and there, without us really knowing why they arrive at this moment or exactly where they come from. The emotion that these images recorded has faded, while remaining present. We don’t understand how memory works.
Oh yes ! Frederic Martin practices meditation. And he writes too. He writes about the images of other photographers, paying extreme attention to others, taking the opposite view from too many artists who only look at their own work.
Richard Petit | curator
Frederic Martin photographer:
fmartin.art
Frederic Martin author:
5ruedu.fr
