My few words:

well, dear friends, decided to continue my series of small articles/interviews with some of the deviants. the last article [link] got me some interesting notes and opinions, and people were really happy to get some insights with artists they admire or look up to.

i also want to mention one thing: i am not doing this to get some sort of imaginary fame or other type of recognition from deviants or the artists themselves. i do not really care about that. but i do care about learning and watching people that inspire me and make me want to be better - artistically speaking.

so i decided to ask *CBJJBC if he could respond a few questions. As seen my french is not as its best, and got a little rusted with time, i decided not to massacre his native language and go ahead with an english interview.

But before you read it, here's my few words about his work. Very powerful and romantic in it's sentiments. Very dark photos reaching to the limit of extreme gothic but also some very tender and soft tonalities. Lots of passionate and well picked colors and shades depict a universe full of ideas shown very up-close and personal. Sometimes maybe too intimate for watchers to fully understand.

Pls take a look at his gallery and works - and as always with my features - it's guaranteed you'll fav at least 2.

thank you all for reading and faving this.
thank you Cyril for some awesome and memorable q/a's!

enjoy,
c.

DDs:



pers fav's



Diana


Holga 135BC


FishEye N02


o r i g i n e s


Diptych


Red Memory


The interview:


c: Good ol’ clichés and shallow things about your likings:

c: asl pls:
CBJ: 09.07.1964 Male, living in Brussels, born in Paris

c: sounds you like: as in music genres or artists
CBJ: I am a rather solitary person and hence I don’t like noises which are imposed on me and which I consider a nuisance. But I enjoy walking in the woods and listening to that very special silence full of an invisible and secret life. And I love the sound of my steps on crisp snow. While answering your questions, I’m listening to « Battle for the Sun » by Placebo. My musical taste is rather eclectic. I like Italian baroque, as well as some French artists like Alain Bashung or Benjamin Biolay for example. Lately I’ve been having a great time listening to Beirout, Devotchka, Casiotone and The Veils


c: visuals: as in moving pictures:
CBJ: Pictures belong to my life. I have an excellent visual memory, whereas I’m not great at remembering names or dates. I’ve just missed my best friend’s birthday !
Watching life go by is for me like making my own films. While in the tram, the underground or walking in the street I observe people and imagine hundreds of possible pictures. I am a very shy person, though.
My favorite directors are Wong Kar Wai, Pedro Almodovar and David Lynch because of their innate talent for frames. I also like Claude Chabrol’s films for their powerful atmospheres.


c: Is photography a way to express yourself artistically or just a hobby? Why photography and not - let's say - knitting?
CBJ: I’ve just heard that the Pet Shop Boys knit in their free time. Well, knitting seems to be very trendy right now. My grand-mother taught me garter stitch when I was 10, but since then… As I said before, I have a real passion for pictures. It’s much more than just a hobby. It’s a way to express myself, just as writing can be in a more confidential manner. If I were to live on a desert island without the possibility to create pictures, I would end up hanging myself.


c: What do you want people to feel when looking at your works? Did your photos ever got misinterpreted?
CBJ: When I show a picture, I never wonder what people will think of it ; the fact that it’s successful or not doesn’t matter at all for me. The virtual world is such that a picture can very easily just disappear, so success doesn’t mean anything. I just hope that it will have an impact. Some years ago, I used to teach in Toulouse and I would just ask my pupils if they liked what I showed them or not, and why. Critical mind gets lost in that flood of pictures our world offers. It becomes very difficult to spend more than a couple of seconds looking at one picture. On the other hand, I refuse to overemphasize the spectacular aspect. Some of my pictures evoking religion, death, destruction or suicide have received very good critics ; but were these good critics right? I don’t know. I do get a lot of comments on my work, but I don’t think that the people who have been following my work for a few years ever misinterpret my pictures, I rather think they like the universe which is mine and in which they recognize themselves.


c: Thumb-in some photos you consider your best, details are welcomed
CBJ: Your question is not an easy one, maybe it’s the most difficult one in this interview. So, to find the answer, I asked myself : « Well, Cyril, if you were to die tomorrow, which are the pictures you would like to be remembered ? »



It’s a picture taken with a Diana+ and an out-of-date film. I always liked to take photographs with the Diana+, even long before lomography came into fashion and became commercial. It was winter in Ostend on the Belgian coast. The light was beautiful, and it was very cold. I have always been fascinated by « the surface of the horizon », hence the title of this picture. Sea and sky are two infinities which exist alongside each other without ever mixing. It’s at the same time a very poetic and a very dramatic situation, and man never ever will be able to change anything there.



« Quiet morning » is a rather atypical picture in my career. It was taken in Bali, Indonesia. It is a very remote place, unknown to guides and tourists. There lives a perfectly autarkical community. With my former friend we spent a lot of time there, sharing with the people, going fishing on the lake. It was an extraordinary experience and never in my life have I felt more relaxed. Whenever my urban life overwhelms me, looking at this photograph has an immediate soothing effect.



« Before today » isn’t a popular picture. I made many selfportraits and it belongs to a phase of my life I don’t want to comment about. I’ll certainly go back to selfportraits, but definitely in a different way. This one at least seems to me honest and sincere. Of all those I ever showed , it’s the one which is most like me, I recognize myself in it. I took that picture on a Sunday morning, I think. I had just had my shower and a shave. In front of the mirror I suddenly realized that I was getting older and that maybe it was time to reconsider my life. I also think it was a turning point in my life. But aging doesn’t scare me and I’m not nostalgic of my young years.
I had written a short text to go with this photograph. The following extract, in French unfortunately, is a rather accurate description of my state of mind at the time.

« Et ça malaxe à mort. Tempes et pleins sont dans le délié. Une écriture aux murs qui ferait tache au blanc printemps. Tu sais, toi, de quelle couleur sera le point final ? Tu la connais l’heure du mot de la fin ? J’ai beau chercher, je ne trouve.
Aveu d’à faiblesses. Que m’importe. Demain, ce sera toujours dimanche. Si tu le veux bien. »


c: Do you think someone who understands your photos also understands what goes inside your soul?
CBJ: As I mentioned before, I think that it is about sharing a universe. Apart from that, everyone is free to interpret their own way. A picture represents one second of my life, just the time to take the photograph. I don’t intend to reveal myself, I wouldn’t want to either, I want to keep some secrets. But I sometimes have the feeling that the people who have been following my work for some years do know me better than I know myself. It’s the paradoxical side of the virtual world. It’s both touching and unsettling.


c: Name three things you want to shoot in the next future
CBJ: I don’t really operate in terms of wanting, but rather instinctively. I take pictures, I show them, I look at them and sometimes I find I could combine them in a series.
I seldom worked on « series », apart with Gilles Maselli for « Meet me in the sun » or with Fabienne Cresens and Half Halgo. That’s why it’s rather impossible for me to tell you what will be my next picture. Honestly, I have no idea what I will photograph in the coming days.


c: Your craziest idea for a photographic experiment would be..?
CBJ: I told you before that I loved silence. It would be extraordinary to be able to take a picture of silence. Although I belong to the « senior members » here on Deviant-Art, I might come up with some ideas !


c: What is the last "piece of art" (any type) that really impressed you
CBJ: I must admit that I have found Deviant-Art a bit boring lately. I have the feeling that photography is a bit running out of steam. There are some artists whose work I like to follow, though =edredon , for example, who apart from being very talented is a real poet. I also appreciate the experimental work of *weltengang for her sensitiveness. And I do like the urban and abstract experiments of *sycamores-and-cedars But it’s impossible to mention them all.

I find the latest series by Christian Duprez and Dominique Dupont very appealing. They are a couple working together without ever revealing who photographed what. They are not on Deviant-Art, but I find their work is worth dwelling upon. [link]


c: Any favorite photography category you enjoy watching
CBJ: As far as I am concerned, I don’t like the idea of categories. When I publish a picture on Deviant-Art, I always have to reflect about which compartment I will put it in. Categories are simplistic. But I very much like the « abstract » and « conceptual » categories. I’m sorry that DA is not offering an « experimental » category, for if photography wants to remain up-to-date and not go downhill like painting has been doing these recent years, it has to acknowledge experimental photography which is often practiced by young artists with very promising perspectives.


c: Do you agree or Not – short explanation required:

c: Film is better than digital:
CBJ: This quarrel which has been on since the beginnings of digital photography is out of date. It is the results that matter, not the tool, which is only a means towards expression. Photoshop offers a way to work very similar to that of a laboratory, except that here the laboratory is a machine.
Would it occur to us to reproach certain pioneers of photography like Leonard Misonne, whom I particularly appreciate, for having used alchemical processes to create their pictures ? Similarly, not so long ago it was common practice (and still is for some artists) to touch up photographs with ink and pen.
The comforting thing is that those who are invested in art business (collectors, gallerists, journalists etc… ) have given up that stupid controversy.

c: black&white is for the people with no imagination:
CBJ: Those who would pretend that are just idiots without any artistic culture.

c: Square photos is all about a good CROP:
CBJ: Of course not. It is very difficult to conceive a picture as appropriate for a square format. The « square » is difficult to handle because it needs to show the essential eliminating anything superfluous.

c: Cocktails are better than beer:
CBJ: Neither nor, but red wine, preferably French, yes ! And especially that modest wine made in Fronton near Toulouse. [link]

c: Fastfood are no match for fancy restaurants:
CBJ: Your question is my answer !

c: sex and rock&roll but no drugs:
CBJ: And why not all three ?
Sex, yes, in all its possibilities.
Rock&roll has been dead for a long time.
And some grass every now and then never harmed anybody, on the contrary.

c: today artistic nudes equal porn:
CBJ: I can’t come to terms with the so-called nude photography. I don’t know if it is right to call it « pornographic », but most of the times it is just vulgar, whoever the model or the author.


c: avantgarde art kicks classic art:
CBJ: Avant-garde doesn’t exist anymore, at least not in photography, and it’s a pity.


c: i love night better than day:
CBJ: Of course ! I don’t like mornings, I love the night, for its silence and that strange impression that in the late hours time slowly becomes incidental. At night I always have the feeling that life is mine, that my future expects me, whereas in the morning I feel like a grumpy idiot.

c: Hypothetical situation: you are able to travel through time and take a photo! What would that photo be?
CBJ: I would have loved to be a portrait painter in Versailles under Louis XVI.I would have been merciless, even with the risk to end up at the Bastille. I was very impressed by the visual quality of Sofia Coppola’s « Marie-Antoinette ». I found it a pity that the critics were less than enthusiastic about it. But don’t think I am a royalist !

c: Ask yourself the question I forgot to ask. And answer.
CBJ: What time is it in Brussels ? 19.31.