Previously on Hans Lucas #20

"Previously on hans lucas" is a monthly publication in which you will find a patchwork of photographs commented by their authors. This issue was conceived with the participation of Eric Karsenty. Resistance, surprise, mystery The team of Previously on Hans Lucas invited me to a peculiar exercise. They asked me to choose with them around twenty images among a hundred pictures carefully picked from their site. Images that were selected seemingly without care about the series from which they were extracted, legends or texts by their authors. Photos that had to defend themselves, alone. Keeping their potential intact, removed from all language. One way of remembering that photography cannot be reduced to words that describe, explain, contextualise or analyse it. Because the images, I mean the good ones, those that can not be reduced to words - or worse, to concepts - retain a capacity for resistance, surprise or mystery that make all their charm. Once these twenty pictures were selected it was necessary to associate them, to choose contiguities at the risk of making sense where there was none. To launch in the montage of a cadavre exquis, a collage of images such as we gather the words of a poem. Perhaps, perhaps, by hoping that their nearness will revive the curiosity of those who look at them, and also surprise their authors. — Eric Karsenty