France –
In 1987, I went to Japan for the second time. I came back dizzy with the gold and Buddhist phantasmagoria. Quite naturally, the Chambers of Love to which I could not put an end, that had given rise to three or four Chambers in Winter, became Chambers of Gold. I revelled in the ambivalence of gold. Uncluttered, mystical spaces, where only the dazzle of the presence still dwells, the last material limit, the last visible surface before pure incandescence, before whiteness.
Text by Bernard Faucon
Chambers of Gold, 1987-1989
Born in France in 1950, Bernard Faucon is one the first artists to explore directed photography and in this way questions the relation between real and manipulated real or false. His work is exhibited all over the world and the European House of Photography in Paris held a retrospective.
At the end of the eighties, Bernard Faucon visits Asia: the inspiring trip for Chambers of Gold. “When I came back, I felt like drunk with gold and Buddhist phantasmagorias.” He entitles his serie Chambers of Gold and continues the work he started for Chambers of Love and Chambers of Winter, showing the all time splendors of the golden statues representing Buddha in the Asian temples he visited.
Deprived of all human presence, his interiors become areas filled with poetry and emotions, where sense of time seems more important than souvenirs. “Empty but mystic rooms, with a blinding presence as the ultimate material limit before pure and erasing whiteness”.
Photography and Written by Christian Caujolle
This series was recently exhibited as part of Photo Phnom Penh 2013 in Cambodia.
