PHOTOGRAPHER ROMAIN FABRY
Romain Fabry
A photographer raised beside the towers of La Defense, where film school became a love of architecture and light. His project is called A Fire From the Inside.
Some photographers chase the unfamiliar. Romain Fabry seems more interested in looking very hard at the world he already knows. He grew up in the Paris suburbs, in the shadow of La Defense, on concrete slabs where the upper class and the immigrant working class lived side by side, and it was that exact mixture, broad culture pressed up against cold contemporary urbanism, that shaped his eye. He trained at film school, then turned to photography because it let him keep his other love, architecture, in the frame. The two pictures here, a sunlit table laid with fruit and hydrangeas and antique faience, and a stretch of the Biarritz coast, sit at opposite ends of his world and somehow belong to the same one.
Concrete and Mixture
Fabry was born and raised in the Paris area, right next to the towers of La Defense, and spent his childhood on those huge concrete slabs where, as he describes it, the upper class and the poorer classes from the immigrant population mix. His aesthetic grew up in that extremely broad cultural blend, surrounded on every side by contemporary urbanism. After graduating from film school he turned to photography, which let him combine his passion for architecture with the act of looking.
It is this extremely broad cultural mixture, surrounded by contemporary urbanism, that my aesthetic developed in.Romain Fabry
In Conversation
Romain Fabry × Antakly Projects
Tell us about your greatest inspirations or influences.
The first big visual impression I received in my childhood was the discovery of David Lynch's work. His way of seeing the world and of interpreting forms was, I think at that time, a solution in phase with the adolescence that I lived. It allowed me to create an imaginary side, an alternative way to appreciate emotions and time. In the same logic, Jean-Luc Godard brought a higher formal and conceptual radicality. It was also the beginning of a political understanding of forms and of visual work as a whole.
Then, in phase with the place where I lived and the aesthetic which was daily to me, Jacques Tati and Eric Rohmer became a great source of inspiration. I think of two very interesting films, Playtime and L'ami de mon amie. Two visions quite close to the new world, because of their criticism of a soulless capitalist urbanism but at the same time of an attraction for a certain aesthetic of modernity. And more contemporary, Romain Gavras and Gaspar Noe, who complete the artistic and political idea in the theme of urban life.
How are the current trends in technology and innovation affecting your work as a creative?
We live in an incredible time, artistically abundant, where technology is in exponential evolution. For example, we see the arrival of the premises of AI, for visual creation in particular. It is a tool that artists will seize, as a medium but also as a conceptual tool for more global reflection on our world. It is with a certain concern that I see the world digitising itself for the benefit of an overheated liberal system, and with a certain excitement in front of the creative capacities that this new world offers us.
We would love to hear more about your creative process.
For me, the creation phase is quite solitary. I incorporate a lot of improvisation and wandering. As for many people, music carries me by giving the overall mood and the essential energy. Then I let myself go.
What do you think of the art world and how it works in general?
The democratisation of art and its access in the last decade has shaken up the sector. A great number of young artists arrive each year with a new vision. This is something that is very positive and extremely enriching. I think that history has never known a period as culturally rich as today. The negative point of all this is the way these professions are considered in the economic system. Creative people are now competed with each other on a global scale. It is therefore very complicated to make a living from these activities. It would be necessary to have a voluntarist policy of help to the creative scene and of valorisation, but I do not think that is the way our leaders take today.
What does well-being mean to you, and is there anything in particular that you practice?
A great existential question. I think that well-being is something complicated and at the same time so simple, when health and money are not an issue, of course. Personally, my method is to get out of the virtual world and enjoy the people around me. This is already a good start.
My method is to get out of the virtual world and enjoy the people around me. This is already a good start.Romain Fabry
It is a fitting note to end on. The work in A Fire From the Inside is full of looking, the slow, attentive kind, and Fabry's parting thanks were simply for the chance to share the visuals for the project. We were glad to.
About Antakly Projects
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