Un reflet - Thomas Dhellemmes

Photo book presenting the whole series of Reflets, made from fragments of polaroids.

He could have preserved them, kept them intact, smooth as false memories, dressed them up with a date and a place, with objective reference points. He could have exposed them as they are, these polaroids, like framed fragments, raw or elusive moments, atmospheres caught on the spot, moments captured while running and forgetting, landscapes transcribed. He could have had no doubt, still looking for a soul and knowing it, claiming to give his vision of the world, his opinion, his perspective. But Thomas Dhellemmes is no fool. What he shows, he has not conquered it, it is not a photographic hunting board. He lets the world be in a hurry without him, telling stories, fighting over the truth like a bone. What he knows is what he remembers. What remains is what his memory has recomposed, what exists is what finds its reflection in the memory. A reflection whose impossible exactitude makes its beauty, a leak, a line of light, like a ridge, on the round and black back of time. Thomas Dhellemmes slows down the movement of reality to hypnotize it, to let it ramble, to slide towards a zone where the planes tip over, where the hierarchies are reversed, where the logics become blurred. In the voluntary sleep, the relaxation, the unconscious associations operate, fragments of memories amalgamate, moments are superimposed. Creative process, the memory skins and reconstitutes, makes its choices, transforms, dilates the insignificance, insults the importance, plays of all the plans: skaters become divers, buildings reefs, clouds become foam, a palm tree a pole. As the sky has already fallen, as the dial has broken from panic, everything is soluble in the dream. The memory chips the moment, the memory disfigures, but its fiction has the merit of sincerity and disparity. Its too dense or faded colors, its ruptures, its jolts, its upside down head, its distortions, each collage entrusted to the chance of memory does not represent anything, but reflections, offers its materiality, not to a projected and perfect image, but to its possible deforming reflection. And its taste of dream and dawn.

Sophie Blandinières