INSIDE HIS OWN SKIN by Laurent Segretier
I want to shoot emotions, not landscapes.
Laurent Segretier, as told by Joanne Ooi.
After many years in Asia, now back in France, where he grew up after emigrating from Guadeloupe with his family at the age of seven, Laurent Segretier started going towards musicians.
"In the Caribbean, music is everything. It’s always been a part of my life, no matter where. When I was in China, it was the link between me and the talent because I didn’t speak Chinese. In France, I started listening to French hip hop. It was the beginning of Frank Ocean and Kanye West, the good Kanye West, more emotional. I could relate to the French artists even more - their migration, struggle, success, cultural assimilations - so I decided to go and meet them. That’s how I started to photograph and do some portraits. That’s how the Brothers series started two years ago".
At the beginning, it was wide angle and flash. But it moved into something blurry. The details were not the subject.
The series features a lot of bare skin and jewelry. But Segretier explains that this seeming homoerotic feminization has a completely different inspiration. “I have this theory that boys relate to their moms very strongly. And that’s why they sometimes have long hair and wear lots of gold. So I started collecting jewellery and asked the talent to bring their own jewelry. The light flares in the photos come from the sparkling and the nudity. I stripped them down because I was in love with the idea of Caravaggio - that his patrons were the Church and royalty but he was an outcast. When a black man is creating, he is very emotional, even feminine. But when the album is released, they become ego monsters. Suddenly, they need cars, they need girls, they need money - so these images are not suitable for album covers.”
During the same period, Segretier turned inwards for inspiration. In 2016, he had done Paid Leave, a solo show in Hong Kong featuring towels photo printed with ironic images snapped during vacations to trite tourist destinations like Kyoto and Phuket, many of them featuring beach scenery. The island photos reminded him of Guadeloupe, his childhood home.
Yet he had never shot his own island or parents.
He decided to visit the island and focus on his family.
"During two trips to Guadeloupe, he created the Homeland series. In the process, his artistic process underwent wholesale transformation. “It was very different to my usual shooting. I wasn’t discovering a landscape or patterns, they were within me. The compositions were very natural. Less finger pointing, not “what the fuck” images, that are satirical or ironic."
It was a pure extension of my eyes.
"The images may be exotic to the viewer, but I didn’t have to think because i knew my subjects very well. It was my own story. I went to very familiar places like houses where I spent holidays as a kid. It was the first time that my own story was in the photos. This is the direction that I will keep on going.”
