The ineffable link

The ineffable link
A text by Jean-Luc Monterosso, Director of the Maison européenne de la photographie, Paris

“Father and son” is the title of the series Grégoire Korganow has been creating since 2009, outwardly simple family portraits where the nakedness of the photographed bodies reveal the depth of a rarely represented subject : the tenderness between a father and his son.

On a neutral, dark background, he photographs unclothed men embracing, most often facing the lens. They are fathers and sons of all ages, of all backgrounds, of all colors. The deep unity of this work comes from the absolute starkness of these images. No clothing, no accessory,nothing to tag a location or attach a scene geographically or socially. These portraits show only bodies in their confrontations and likenesses, without any context beyond the title of the series.

More than the humanist nostalgia of a mythical state of nature, Grégoire Korganow’s eye is that of the scientist, who unceasingly isolates,observes and palpates the interactions of a microcosmos peopled by similar yet different subjects. In this non-place choreographed by the photographer, fathers and sons have no other choice than to grab onto each other. And then, from these images outpours an incredible tension, born from the strong or hesitant embraces, the proud or sideways glances, bringing the audience face to face with the universal image
of a deep and sometimes disturbing intimacy.

The photographs are striking because you discover, in a language of irrefutable clarity and efficiency, an essential yet troubling facet of our identity. If the mother is the origin of the world, the first place, the father is that unspeakable and untouchable god who escapes representation. The father’s body is a mystery perhaps even bigger than that of the mother’s for the son, who reads into it, unbelieving, the lines of his future. Their embraces partake in baroque statuary, frozen yet vacillating, ready to tip over into a mysterious thereafter, allegory of the cycle of life. Father and son prop each other up in a dance where the image of one is only the partial reflection of the other, deformedthrough time and space. The photograph becomes a record and a premonition for these tightrope walkers who advance entwined in front of the photographer’s lens.

But Grégoire Korganow’s images can’t just be reduced to a simple spot the differences game that entertains or disturbs the audience. The triviality of the bodies of these men marked by life violently contrasts with the academic strictness of the photographic protocol. The codes of the statue-like bourgeois family portrait are reduced to naught in these images that refuse to be staged to get as close as possible to truth. The photographer excludes any accessory that would connote social position. In the same way one would be hard-pressed to see in Grégoire
Korganow’s pictures an illustration of the so-called Oedipus complex. That isn’t the subject. Quite the opposite, by removing any noise from the father/son relationship, the idea is to create a specific space for photography where psychoanalysis itself doesn’t penetrate anymore. Through a process of baring, of utopia, that calls upon the nakedness of bodies and setting to reveal in each of its models the best-hidden intimacy.

This is Grégoire Korganow’s talent, knowing how to bring his models beyond the strictures of social conventions. By examining the stigmata of paternity and filiation, rejecting violence and conflict in favor of tenderness and fragility, he creates a work of impressive purity. Without forcing any interpretation, his images have the beauty and intensity of the out of space and out of time. Fathers and sons remain the custodians of a relationship that is forever beyond words.