BERNARD FAUCON

BERNARD FAUCON

SHORT BIOGRAPHY

Born in Provence in 1950, after studying philosophy and theology, Bernard Faucon became one of the pioneers of staged photography.

Having made his first pictures in 1976, he was convinced that staging was the swan song of the photographic medium, the last step before the rein of the pure, digital, publicity image. He made a decision to put an end to his work in 1995. The belief in the power of photographic truth had waned to such a degree that it no longer justified building “real fictions.”

Faucon’s work has been featured in hundreds of one-man and group shows. He worked regularly with Léo Castelli in New-York, Holden Luntz Gallery in Palm Beach, Agathe Gaillard, Yvon Lambert and Vu la Galerie in Paris.

In 2007, the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris held a retrospective of his work covering all the periods from First Photographs to Temps d’après. It ended with the event “The Liquidation of the Cabin.”

After retiring as a photographer, Bernard Faucon developed the project The Happiest Day of My Youth. A party in 25 countries that involved hundreds of young photographers, it ended with a group show. Putting the camera in new hands was a way of delaying the inevitable and prolonging the ceremony of the stagings: celebration, youth, the insouciance of the image.

Starting in 2000, the written word, which had been present from the beginning, finally took precedence over photography with poetry collections, La peur du voyage, Summer 2550, First Photographs, and the work-in-progress My Routes. The latter series was a mobile (or auto-mobile!) autobiography, a way of telling his life story over videos of roads filmed around the world.

Bernard Faucon wrote: “When the idea became clear in the fall of 2010, I got the wonderful feeling that, despite the dulling effects of time, I had found a new means of expression. More than three decades after the summer of 76 and the aha moment of the stagings, this would be my new, my final means of expression.”