Born in Apt, Provence, France, 1950. Master's degree of philosophy, Sorbonne, Paris 1973. Works and lives in Paris, France. Please ask the gallery for the updated CV.
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Press Release - Les Grandes Vacances
It is a surprise that an artist like Bernard Faucon needs to be introduced. With a long list of exhibitions at important museums like the Museum of Modern Art, Centre Pompidou, galleries like Castelli in NY or Yvon Lambert in Paris, collections like the Guggenheim NY, the Victoria & Albert Museum, or the Centre Pompidou and many more he is one of the most popular French art-photographers of the last thirty years. His last museum exhibitions were his retrospective in the Maison Européene de la Photography in Paris and in 2010 the show at the New Orleans Museum of Art. He published more than thirteen books, not only in French, but also in English, Japanese and Korean.
Bernard Faucon is writing himself about this works:―The idea of fabricating fictions, the idea of a possible equation between photography and the dummies, struck me quite out of the blue. Childhoods made of flesh and plaster, the many lights of the Luberon, the nostalgia and actuality of desires, crystallised together through the magical operation of the photographic record. The power to fix, eternalise in light, attest to the world the perfection of an instant.
The summer of ’76 got off to a flying start. I could feel my strength and my youth burst open. I filled the Mehari (my cheap Citroen open-top car) with dummies and I was all over the drives, the dormitory in my parents’ children home, the churchyard in Lioux, the swimming-pool in SaintSaturnin, the beaches of Saintes-Maries de la Mer in the Camargue. I would hurriedly set up the dummies , and after the shot, pack up and set off again. As they invested those places that bore the mark of my childhood I imagined that those little men freed from their shop-windows, released unknown forces, brought to light sublime, masterful evidence.
Art critic Amy White writes in the press release for his exhibition at the New Orleans Museum of Art: "Faucon was born in Provence in 1950 and pursued his education in philosophy and theology. After completing his master’s degree, he became one of the first contemporary artists to explore the universe of staged photography. His photographic work, which he began in 1976 and deliberately stopped in 1995, consists of seven large series of ―true fictions.‖ In 1989, Faucon was chosen as the main recipient of Grand Prix National, France. His artwork has been exhibited internationally and he has written several books that have been published in French, English, Japanese and Korean. In 1995, visionary French photographer Bernard Faucon stopped taking pictures. ―One way or another,‖ the artist declared, ―I had to eventually make true my claim to finish, my obsession with closing. This became The End Of The Image.‖ In a move that echoes Marcel Duchamp’s public exit from the world of art to play chess, Faucon has not presented any new work since his 1995 coup d’art.
In 1984, Jean Paul Michel described Faucon’s work as having: "...the striking effect of a presence by the most careful staging of an absence." In this phrase, Michel seems to have forecasted Faucon’s aesthetic vanishing act. And yet, if you look back at Faucon’s images, empty rooms aglow with unearthly light, natural landscapes as sites of the supernatural, saintly figures of desire, loss and supplication – it seems clear that this was Faucon’s project all along."
Evolution Probable du Temps
Les Chambres
Les Idoles et les Sacrifices
Les Escritures
La Fin de L´image
Bernard Faucon: Le Départ
Bernard Faucon: La Chambre que Brûle
Bernard Faucon: La Premiére Chambre D’amour
Bernard Faucon: Dai - Le Champ de Coquelicots
Bernard Faucon: Peut être que je reviendrai
Bernard Faucon: Un Sentiment Infini