Verso / 遮面

By Thomas Sauvin
Co-published by Jiazazhi and RVB

I like to see the identity photo as a fossil, a sort of human imprint fixed on a layer of paper. Banal, repetitive, monotonous, these ultra-standardised portraits are somewhat the antonym of artistic portraits and yet, beyond their signal functions, a certain charm emerges from these faces forced to neutrality.

In this series called VERSO I plunged into my collection gleaned in China over the last fifteen years. The series was born simply. By exposing these photos to a strong light source, we discover the print by transparency while very laconic information, written in a more or less singular calligraphy, appears on the faces. These handwritten notes provide us with allusive information about unknown people who obviously no longer belong to the administration of the living. A name, a place, a date are all that remain of these lives reduced to mere squares of paper, fragile deposits printed on fibres. And yet, can we imagine better traces to evoke their passage? It is as if the fusion of the front and back sides, bringing a face and modest biographical elements into the same plane, opened up a new register, that of a latent encounter between an image and its hidden face.

 我喜欢把证件照看作是一种化石，一种固定在纸上的人类印记。平庸、重复、单调，这些超标准的肖像照在某种程度上是艺术肖像照的反义词，然而，在其信号功能之外，这些被迫保持中立的面孔中也出现了某种魅力。

在这个名为遮面的系列中，我投入了过去15年里我在中国收集的作品。这个系列的诞生很简单。通过将这些照片暴露在强烈的光源下，我们发现印刷品是透明的，而非常简练的信息，以一种或多或少单一的书法书写，出现在脸上。这些手写的笔记为我们提供了关于这些佚名者的暗示性信息，这些人显然不再属于仍在世的人的管理范围。一个名字，一个地方，一个日期是这些生命的全部，只剩下方块纸，印在纤维上的脆弱的沉淀物。然而，我们能想象出更好的痕迹来唤起他们的经过吗？仿佛正面和反面的融合，将一张脸和适度的传记元素带入同一个平面，开辟了一个新的寄存器，即图像和其隐藏的脸之间的潜在相遇。