Seaside Resort - Nostalgic Post-cards
These post card pictures document the Seaside Resort of La Grande Motte, its exceptional architecture was built in 1967 by Jean Balladur. This series paints an unreal place, too much perfect of a dreamed world. This fantastic resort reminds me of old memories, about vacation on the sea coast.
This series was the first serious one I produced and presented for my final exam of the Superior Photographic Diploma back in 2024. It's so close but feels too farther today, after many trips around, few exhibitions, new series and projects…
The Statement behind
“This series documents the seaside resort of La Grande Motte, a city with exceptional architecture built in 1967 by Jean Balladur. My photographic approach is articulated in three chapters that explore different facets of the same place. The images produced are akin to time capsules initiated by my deepest childhood memories.
A first documentary vision made in color analog takes us back to the 70s, when the first vacationers began to flow into the city. The wide framing allowed me to introduce into the image astonishing characters, as if out of time, frozen by the "decisive moment".
The second series highlights the modernity of the place through the play of tight and vertical framing. It consists of a set of smooth shapes that draw flat areas of color on the facades lit by summer light. Reality is subjectified by a frontal framing from which all perspective is erased.
Finally, a series of still lifes made in a studio using a digital chamber and artificial lighting. These compositions based on stereotypical objects from the seaside universe echo the graphic and colorimetric aesthetics of previous series. They invite to reverie, to innocent memories of vacation time.
The last photograph of this series is a tribute to one of Paul Outerbridge’s still lifes named «Images de Deauville», 1936.
These three visual writings depict the same unreal setting, almost too perfect of a fictitious, idealized world. This fantastic place awakened in me distant memories, those of a summer vacation by the sea”
- Sullylux
