Alors s'assit sur un monde en ruine une jeunesse soucieuse

By vincent baldensperger

Découverte lors d’un repérage photo, ce témoin né en 1928 et condamné en 1997 fait encore face aux éléments dans un silence total. Les 3500 ouvriers et les machines se sont tus, la carcasse du géant grignotée sans relâche s’amaigrit, se fragilise, ça respire l’agonie d’un monde industriel devenu trop encombrant. Autour c’est la campagne, la nature qui petit à petit reprend sa place. Autour c’est aussi des milliers d’emplois à réinventer, ailleurs…

“Alors s’assit sur un monde en ruine une jeunesse soucieuse.”
A. De Musset / La Confession d’un enfant du siècle

XV

By vincent baldensperger

Ma petite participation à la dernière coupe du monde de rugby a débuté fin 2022. Philippe me propose de réaliser une série de 55 portraits d’internationaux du XV de France. Un style, une signature, du noir et blanc tel que j’aime le travailler. Une belle galerie de belles gueules au final.

L’exercice est clair et “facile” sur le papier, un peu plus délicat en pratique dès les premiers rendez-vous. Il y a ce facteur temps qui rythme les séances les unes après les autres. En moyenne une quarantaine de minutes pour installer mon fond, ma source flash, mon réflecteur, réglages boitier, réglages lumières, séance portrait puis rangement de l’ensemble.

Autre découverte en chemin, la gestion des plannings, des lieux de shooting, pour aller à la rencontre de ces internationaux et réaliser chaque séance avec un minimum de “confort” de travail. De Toulouse à Biarritz, Bordeaux, La Rochelle, Paris, Perpignan, Béziers, Montpellier, Aix, Toulon, Clermont, Lyon… rendez-vous donc chez moi pour certains, chez eux pour d’autres, on pousse les meubles, les canapés du salon. On improvise aussi dans des vestiaires de stades, des salles de restaurants, des chambres d’hôtel, bref tout ce qui peut faire office de mini studio.

Au total quasiment 9 mois de réalisation, 9 mois de rencontres et de découvertes, 9 mois de bonheur.

Je rend une fois encore hommage à tous ces rugbymans qui m’ont accordé ces quelques instants devant l’objectif, à Philippe Toinard qui m’a confié ce superbe projet, à l’équipe des Editions de La Martinière pour leur confiance.

Les quelques portraits de cette galerie sont extraits de ma sélection…

Life of Byron

Life of Byron

We’ve been away.

It’s been quite a while since I posted an essay here—but also, we got out of town for a few days.

If you’ve visited Australia, you’ve probably heard of Byron Bay; it’s one of those towns whose reputation precedes it—beautiful beaches, surfers with Kombi vans, a relaxed lifestyle, music festivals, did I mention the beaches?

And yes, all of that is true, which is why when a friend very kindly offered his house for a week, we jumped at the chance to have a bit of summer in winter. (Yes, this is what Byron looks like in winter!)

The Way Back

By Patrick La Roque

Vinyl, it turns, out, was a gateway.

I first installed the turntable on a rotating tv stand (quite the anachronistic piece of furniture from my mom's house), next to the desk, connected to the mixer through a small pre-amp hastily purchased from Amazon. The old records sounded great in the studio monitors, and for awhile I was perfectly content spinning albums while busying myself with daily work. But after a few after-hours listening sessions in that office chair, I thought to myself "man, this is kinda silly". So I pulled an older set of slightly busted powered speakers out of storage, and moved the whole setup to the other end to the room. The sound took a hit, but I could live with it. I went up to the attic, found an ageing Ikea lounge chair—a leftover from my bachelor days—dropped it smack-dab on the "sweet spot". But now the tv stand looked ridiculous so I ordered a small media cabinet, cheap and nothing fancy, but clean. I added my buddy Robert's Uberlight to illuminate the turntable when needed. Got some cleaning supplies to refresh my dusty collection (along with twenty+ classical records acquired for a dollar each at a neighbourhood yard sale).

One day, not too long ago, I started thinking about the receiver I'd purchased back in the 90s—a mid-range Harman Kardon. The new cabinet had this built-in shelf just begging for it. I remembered something being broken, but after a good cleanup everything worked, except for the radio. No big deal, right? I unplugged the pre-amp, tested the receiver's Tape Out to see if it would send a signal to the powered speakers. It did, and the sound immediately expanded (not sure why, it's a direct pass through...whatev). This Tape Out setup, however, meant bypassing the unit's signal processing. Bit of a shame. I cursed myself for selling RFT speakers for peanuts, years ago.

Note to self: be a pack-rat, damn it, you never know.

On our visit to the Maricourt flea market I headed straight for the electronics section, hoping to maybe get lucky and unearth a decent pair of stereo speakers. Nope. Damn it. I was a dog with a bone now. I found myself lurking on audio forums here and there, to get a sense of what was available, what could be ok, and affordable. Brands to avoid, those to look for. Just curious, you see.

I found a deal on a set of Elac Debut 2.0 b6.2—German brand, design by Andrew Jones (famed speaker designer), mostly glowing reviews all-around.
I took one more step.

...

I've been a musician my entire life. I used to spend hours and hours dissecting album after album, of all genres, lying on dusty apartment floors, alone or with friends, rooms drenched in burning incense with the lights turned down to half a sliver of a lux. But over time music slipped into the background, a soundtrack to merely colour the day to day movements of our lives. Unobtrusive to the point of anonymity. Music for work, for dinner, for cooking, and driving. Music as decor. Spatial Audio? Pfff. Most of this wasn't even played in stereo anymore, relegated to solitary Echo and Sonos devices pretending to sound right.

Now for the first time in years, I don't simply hear music—I stop, I explore, I choose, I listen. Not just to vinyls either: I've wired outputs from the studio mixer to the Harman Kardon receiver, which allows me to send audio from the Mac (or any device with Airplay), opening up our entire streaming library.

Filling a room with sound is transcendent: there is air and movement and vibrating particles interlocking, bouncing off walls and piercing the skin. Resonances like mantras and soft meditations. Character borne of chipped paint, old wood, and glass. It's the sound of ghosts, of unrelenting memories, a realm of contemplation and awe and alchemy.

Vinyl, it turns out, was a way back.

Glitter & Stars

By Patrick La Roque

I'm searching for words that aren't coming. The snow's falling, finally, enough of it to cover the brown and beige monotony of the past month. 2022 is almost over and yeah, it was slow around here. I'd love to pinpoint a reason, but I confess to being at a complete loss. Is it fatigue? A less urgent need to express ourselves on a regular basis?

When I saw Bert's post a week ago I immediately picked up my camera and walked around our house, now fully decked out for the holidays. It felt right. Maybe not as essential as it once did, but comforting. A beginning, at least.

Wishing you all the very best.
More inspiration, more awe, more love.

The Storyteller

BY BERT STEPHANI

Yesterday I finished Dave Grohl’s book “The Storyteller”. I can’t say that I’m a fan of his music but it was interesting to read the life story of an artist. I admire his fearless way of being himself and create. To be honest, I’m a bit jealous of his mindset. As I see myself as a storyteller as well, the book made me ask myself some questions:

  • Am I too lazy?

  • Where’s the Rock and Roll in my life?

  • Where are the stories?

And last night, while I was lying in bed, I thought about the KAGE Collective. 
We have just paid the rent for our recording studio, aka our Squarespace subscription, just like we did last year, although the studio remained empty.  I don’t blame anyone, not even myself. We all have work and families that rightfully take up the bulk of our time. And we also have our own media channels to fill with images and words. Those are the channels that bring in the work so they should be first on our mind. 

The KAGE studio is not where we perform our greatest hits, it’s a safe place to experiment away from the mainstream audience. It’s a place for failure and growth. It’s a place that I NEED. I won’t keep paying for this studio if I never use it. 

I’ve been an artist for long enough to know that you can’t just sit and wait for inspiration to strike. Sure, it happens every now and then but don’t hold your breath. You can have meetings with the band about ideas for a new album but although fun, these meetings are usually unproductive. The only way that I know of to get going … is to get going. It doesn’t matter on what, just start creating.

So here I am at our recording studio, gently strumming my laptop and tuning my camera in an unfamiliar key just to see where that leads me. 

The other band members are way more talented than I am so I hope someone will drop by the studio to jam together. At this point it’s irrelevant to where it will lead. It’s about just doing it, experiment. Sooner or later part of a riff will surface from the chaos which will lead to a chorus, which will lead to a song, which will lead to an album, and so on. 

One, two, and a one, two, three, four …

Dispatch from an Analog Day

By Patrick La Roque

I shut down my phone last night. Doesn't happen very often so I'd forgotten the key combo. Had to dig in the settings for that one. My iPad is off as well, nestled between two books on my desk. The computer is silent; no fans, no whirrs, and no glare hitting my retinas everywhere I turn. It's early, still, but already minutes seems looser, elasticized by the sudden disappearance of markers. This is a dispatch from my first self-imposed analog day. As in, few electronics or screens, no multipurpose devices. I'm writing this on a typewriter, after filling up two pages in a notebook. I also took pictures of a dead houseplant a few moments ago—they’re on the card but I haven’t looked.

I'm not wearing my watch.
So far, so good.

There’s an unusual sort of anxiety in the air, like you've forgotten something but don't quite know what it is. Thoughts pop into my head, ideas I’d normally record on a machine, to check, or note, whatever. But I have to stop myself and there’s a sudden jolt, as my brain reassesses, unexpectedly. This is years of conditioning, challenged. An entire workflow upended. Every time it happens there's a micro-panic while my mind scrambles for a solution, searching for its bearings, trying hard to settle. And it does. It does.

…

No metrics. Today will not exist. To all those apps, I'll be a non-entity for the next 24 hours, a blank placeholder between streaks. Nothing out there will know that I drank water, and meditated, and spent time working on a post on a 1960s machine with mechanical arms banging and smacking and splashing ink on a letter-sized piece of office paper. My existence today will leave no trace. A precipice. Null and void.

What I do now, I do from Outside. I could be an unknown force fomenting a quiet revolution away from prying eyes. There is no word count, no time tracking.

This day will not be logged.

I Don’t Know.

By Patrick La Roque

I’m using the title of this post as a direct response to Bert’s Now What?  And while I’m at it, let me also echo his appreciation of the work some of you shared on Instagram during the #kage202202 project: you folks do indeed rock. Thank you.

But my god, what a loaded, impossibly difficult question to answer. Because we’re still mostly stumbling in the dark, aren’t we? I did my first maskless shoot in almost three years a few weeks ago, and I was stunned by how emotional that was. I felt a weight lifted that I didn’t even know I’d been carrying. I’ve always been fully on-board with measures surrounding COVID-19, especially mask-wearing which is just, basic, elementary and beyond obvious. It’s an airborne virus. We wash our hands before dinner too, FFS.

And yet here I was. 

As I stood there with strangers, watching their mouths and lips and smiles, listening to unmuffled voices, shooting the breeze without care, the memories flooded back: this is normal, this is what we do. We are social animals. We exist in packs and feed on the warmth, breath, and oscillations of others. I’d even argue that, for the most solitary among us, disconnection is only possible because we’re secure in the knowledge of others, out there, within reach. Anything else is a void, not a choice. So what I felt there, I think, was hope. 

And then Russian forces bombed a maternity hospital.

I use the word “force” because I refuse to believe this is the Russian people’s war. It is a war of old, cruel men with blackened hearts, grasping at the vestiges of a savage century. A roomful of tyrants with the unfortunate power to destroy the world. Wait, what was my point again? Ah, yes: that I don’t know. That I Don’t. Fucking. Know.

Other than we must go on, and dig the earth and pull at the stars and do everything in our power to shine, shine, shine. One image, one song, one story at a time.

This is the torch we wield in the night.
And its flame should burn.

Now What?

BY BERT STEPHANI

So we finally got off our asses and kicked them in gear, but now what?

I can’t talk for anyone else, I can only talk for myself, but I’m not too impressed with what I produced in February. For some reason, it feels like I’m done with the more traditional documentary stories that have made up the bulk of what we’ve done in KAGE. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll always be documenting life but at this point I don’t know if the short photo story is the way to do that for me anymore. Maybe I’ve worked in this style for too long, maybe it’s the pressure of a project at an inconvenient time, maybe I’m just getting old. Whatever the reason, it’s time to explore other ways of storytelling, other types of stories.

Here are some colour shots that didn’t make the project:

Some observations and thoughts:

  • I might need to give my pictures more breathing room and give them time to speak to me. The whole instant thing is deeply ingrained in my way of working and I need to get away from it.

  • I would like to work less chronological and literal. I’m not a news photographer, I want to share more personal, complex and nuanced concepts.

  • Wow, you guys rock. I’ve seen truly amazing images on Instagram from those who joined us in this project.

  • For the past 15+ years I’ve been carrying a camera pretty much all the time and I need to keep doing that. But I also need to plan very specific photography outings to immers myself completely in making work without combining something else with photography.

  • It was great to be forced to shoot through this project. Often it’s a matter of just getting started and something will happen. Frustration got the best of me a number of times during last month for not creating anything that I really liked. While I need to push myself to create, I shouldn’t be so harsh on myself if the muse doesn’t show herself immediately. I just need to thrust the process.

  • It’s too soon for conclusions but that’s fine. Let’s keep shooting and see where it will take me.

Some black and white images that didn’t make the stories:

As a collective, we are not sure where we want to go next. We’ll see but we are interested to hear your comments. How did you experience this project?