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