Photographies du soir

Photographies du soir consists of a series of images taken by Julien Carreyn between 2014 and 2017. Placing with a formidable precision a self-published editorial practice at the heart of his artistic production, Julien Carreyn offers withPhotographies du soir a singular and ambitious publication that presents for the first time his photographic work on color. This series of 41 images is followed by texts by art critic Claire Moulène and Scottish artist Mick Peter.

“It is always precious to know what artists look at, what works, in the mille-feuille of art history, by some genealogical or aesthetic turn, had vampirized their imagination. It is often surprising. In the case of the author of Photographies du soir, we are surprised and almost immediately enchanted by the disorderly voyage he proposes: by way of Matisse and therefore his paradise, Bonnard and Corot, but also the vampire films of Jean Rollin on the banks of the Loire and Les Noces rouges by Chabrol; the pastel interiors by Marc-Camille Chaimowicz and the indecipherable though highly erotic photographs by the painter David Salle.

Each image of this book, as modest as it may be, contains a little of all that. As much as they individually cultivate a certain sulky and lascivious monotony, involving the same portraits of well-bred heroines, with ankle-length pants and sweaters pulled up to conceal cleavage; the same Day in the Country on the banks of the river, dormitories with unmade beds, deserted shopfronts on provincial main streets and declining summer evenings; they carry within them, collectively, this cultural density, this consistency. Because it’s by putting things end to end that we manage to bring the underground labyrinth into the light. And by putting image on page, that we give body to this occult matrix.”

Claire Moulène, 2018