1989: born.
1991: born again (adopted).
2014: my exhibition at the Louvre.
Photographs have been a vital part of my life since I was very young. Perhaps because they were proof that I really existed, that I had a family. That might be obvious to all of you, but not to a Roma boy born in Romania, abandoned at birth and adopted at the age of two. I built up my own culture by cutting out photos from magazines and I started taking pictures early on, at the age of 13, in my family and in the streets. I never found my place at school or at art school. I learnt by copying photographers I liked. I'm completely self-taught. I forge ahead at my own pace, in all lucidity. I only express what I feel deeply. It was by going to art cinemas that I discovered the power of images. Maybe that's why I became familiar with the stars I photograph without complacency or sentimentality. Lynch, Trintignant, Lacroix, Bertolucci, Almodovar, Polanski and so on have created the mythology of the 21st century. I never give these celebrities the special treatment they're used to. A 25-year-old photographer owes it to himself to look for more than that. My models have wrinkles, dilated pores and facial blemishes like anyone else at their age. Any idea of their being superior to ordinary mortals is banished. In their eyes you can read astonishment, curiosity or uncertainty. By mixing portraits of these celebrities with those of my grandmother, illegal migrants, 'marginals' and Roma children, comparing the real with the fictitious, I have constructed an artificial genealogy, a substitute family for myself. In short I'm just a craftsman who experiences moments of poetry, a dissector of faces who enjoys exploiting the timelessness of black and white and the omnipresence of natural light. Especially the light of Southern France.
Exposition « Portraits »
Marian Adreani à la galerie Hegoa
Du 12 février au 21 mars 2015
16 rue de Beaune, 75007 Paris
By Maurice Gouiran