Artist Bio
Frédéric Guy is a self-taught photographer. His first visual influences came from his father, who worked as a photographer in Algeria and introduced him to the classics of black-and-white cinema. His aesthetic has been shaped by Italian Neorealist cinema, the tactile qualities of his Leica IIIc and Nikkormat cameras, and the techniques of Polaroid photography. Among the photographers who have influenced his work, he particularly admires Bernard Plossu for his delicacy, freedom of composition, and humble approach to image-making, as well as for his commitment to analogue photography and small-format prints.
Statement
O SOLE MIO
“There are flowers everywhere for those who are willing to see them,” Matisse said. There is also sunshine everywhere for those who are willing to look for it. It is this way of seeing that I wanted to convey through the lens of my Polaroid. A light that asks only to be seen. ‘O Sole Mio!—my sun, my own sun. Borrowed from the most universal of Neapolitan songs, this title expresses a simple truth: the light we choose to look at becomes, for a moment, our own. Just as Matisse sought in colour an antidote to bitterness, I have sought in the sun and its shadow a promise kept against grey days. This series, created over a long period with my Polaroid, is a wandering between the sea and still life, between silhouettes and diptychs, where blue returns again and again—the blue of the Mediterranean, the blue of cast shadows, a blue that answers the yellow of the sun like a breath. Each image seeks less to describe than to evoke a feeling: the vibration of a colour, the grace of a suspended moment, the discreet beauty of everyday life bathed in light. My photographs humbly attempt to rediscover the path Matisse traced with his brush—that of an art that soothes, uplifts, and brings smiles. In times of crisis as in times of calm, the sun remains the address of happiness. Like an antidote to bitterness, a remedy for melancholy, a light held against dark days.
