7/7 - Agence VU'

7/7

Guillaume Herbaut

7/7. L’Ombre des vivants. 2002-2008

7 series for 7 stories of survivors, ghosts and memories that are kept silent, but that we always keep inside and that mark us forever. 7/7 carries the memory of the tragedies of History: the Albanian vendetta, the Nazi genocidal policy in Auschwitz, the contaminated woods of Chernobyl, the pariahs of Nagasaki or the martyred women of Ciudad Juárez. Cruelty, the will to power, revenge… In successive scenes, in a disenchanted silence, Guillaume Herbaut shows us the appalling consequences on men and their environment. Because this is indeed a question of human beings. Or more precisely, its loss.

7/7 is a contract that Guillaume Herbaut has made between photography and himself: can his fear be the reason for a work? To go to the field, where violence operates, not to suffer it or even to bear witness to it, but to make it his target: a study on the nature of contemporary humanity.

Reflecting on his images with a pencil in his hand, taking notes and sketching, the photographer goes step by step until the shot is taken. Revenge in Albania, terror in Mexico, injury in Japan, trauma in Poland or haunting in Ukraine, form long circles that always bring the photographer back to his own history.

Could giving a face to what frightens us help to ward off our fears? Memento mori: behind the aesthetics of the vanities, the images here form an art of dying.

Michel Poivert

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