” Only in Avignon can this type of image exist. He knows all the stages and all the entrances and exits of the festival. His photographs embody the decisive moments of the shows, the acting of the actors, but also the work upstream and around the directors, the lighting designers, the technicians, the receptionists, without forgetting the precious gaze of the spectators. For 17 years, Christophe Raynaud de Lage has been the official photographer of the Festival d’Avignon, which this year is dedicating a magnificent immersive exhibition to him, “L’œil present”, at the Maison Jean Vilar. Meet.
RFI : The Russian director Kirill Serebrennikov created a sensation at the Festival this year with the premiere of his show The black monk in the Cour d’honneur of the Palais des Papes. What is the photo you took of this room that you like the most ?
Christophe Raynaud de Lage : There is this photo with the whole row of monks, all the men who are aligned with a moon. It’s a very nice prospect. A very graphic photo that I particularly like.
You have been the official photographer of the Festival d’Avignon since 2005. What was the first photo taken at the Festival that you were proud of? ?
My photos are often linked to memories, to an experience. It is not just a plastic and aesthetic success. A great memory of 2005 is Jean-Louis Trintignant. I learned of his death this year when I was watching rehearsals for the play in the Cour d’honneur at the Palais des Papes. At the time, I took photos of Trintignant in the Cour d’honneur for a rehearsal which was at 2am. I only had a few pictures to take of him. He was alone on stage in the main courtyard. After doing the portraits, I stayed to listen to him. For me, it remains a very striking moment, a moment that the image carries afterwards.
You don’t just do theater photography, but you are best known as a theater photographer. When did you feel that you were no longer a photographer, but a theater photographer ?
More broadly, from the start, I have been a show photographer. I started with street arts and contemporary circus. The theater came a little later. I had this entrance both through the public space for the street arts and the circle for the circus, before entering the theaters. I have always had a relationship to space and mobility, angles of view that has characterized me from the start.
What happens when you take a picture on stage or at a show ? Is it a kind of extension of the show in another form ? Or is there another creation beginning? Or two overlapping creations ?
You want to talk about the decisive moment of the photo? At the time, the quest for the image is in the relationship of composition, of the moment… Afterwards, when I process my images, the selection, the work is to find the meaning in relation to the show. The justification of the image also exists through meaning, it is not just a visual success at the time. Afterwards, things have to come together and find a justification.
You have taken countless photos of shows, meetings and exchanges with artists. Have you ever experienced that a director or an actor confessed to you that he learned or discovered something about his own work thanks to your photos? ?
I am lucky to have real exchanges with directors. They take over my images, because I am very early in rehearsals. It feeds them. I am an attentive spectator. So I bring them other points of view and they use them to see if there are things that work or not. Then they can readjust according to what I bring them. I am incorporated into the process of creation, because they take hold of the material that I bring to them. I am at the heart of their intimacy and their trust. I am not an intruder, I am with them, at their side, I accompany them. The meaning of my work, and this is increasingly true for me, is that I am not a pure photography enthusiast. I am passionate about the links that I manage to weave with my position as a photographer. This is my way of sharing with all the artists.
There, I have already photographed a few shows, with actors that I really like, there are some that I met in schools, in conservatories, I saw them when they debuted and I see them again today today at the Avignon Festival. There is a real friendship, complicity. They are almost my “children” that I see growing up. I have a mirror effect, because the actor doesn’t see the show, he’s in it.
You are one of the great theater photographers in France. You have followed a photographic training in France. Is there a French theater photography as there is, for example, a French cinema ?
It’s hard to answer. When I was a very young photographer, at the National Louis-Lumière Photography School, I met a very great photographer who meant a lot to me and who died too soon, Claude Bricage (1939-1992). He was the photographer of Patrice Chéreau, Antoine Vitez… He was an important photographer who brought a new vision. For a long time, photography was often portraits. Bricage restored the relationship to scenography, to space. He dared images with, sometimes, a very small actor in the dark. Pictures that say things. A form of writing that has fascinated, marked and influenced me. There was also Nicolas Treatt, who had his own touch. Afterwards, I’m not sure that there are movements of show photographs. We are so few and perhaps not visible enough to know the influences of each other.
In The present eye, your very rich and original exhibition on your work at the Festival d’Avignon, with very astonishing formats and points of view, you do not only show the directors or the actors, but all the life around, the wonderful theater places in the City of the Popes, and also a whole work on the public. Could you tell us about a photo which for you is emblematic of the role of the spectator at the Festival d’Avignon ?
A very striking photo for me, I made it during the creation ofInfernos (in 2008) by Romeo Castellucci in the Cour d’honneur. Me, I sit in front of the public and the 2,000 spectators are covered with a shroud that gradually rises. And me, I am in front of this public. It is a fascinating image. It is only in Avignon that this type of image can exist.
► The eye present, photographing the Festival d’Avignon at the risk of the suspended momentphotographic installation by Christophe Raynaud de Lage, from July 7 to 26, at the Maison Jean Vilar, Avignon.