Simon
Beraud
© Simon Beraud - 2025 - All Rights Reserved
The Struggle
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P.L.: "What is the genesis of your series?"
S.B.: "The Genesis... It's the absence…
I started photographing this series at the end of a work on love - with my girlfriend - called ''G.''
At her house, a concrete wall had often caught my eye. I was drawn to this wall, but I didn't really know why... Came a time when the feeling of love between Gabrielle and I cooled a little. I was saddened by it...
To photograph is an act of expressing the love of seeing and the love of being. But there you have it, no more photos, a love that was fading, the absence of that sparkle, the pain of the absence...
And one day, my gaze turns again to that concrete wall, and I understand a little better why...
Despite the difficulties, I saw in this wall a way to revive our love, a way to tell certain aspects of love and life.
P.L.: "What do you want to convey through it?"
S.B.: "Conveying isn't my primary concern... I mean : the creative act is first and foremost about transcribing very intimate things that may come through you. As an artist, it's above all about expressing what's happening within you that's important... Then, we're all similar; obviously, we'll all experience questions that can be shared at some point in our lives. In this work, which is originally a series of photographic sequences, I wanted to express a point of view on what '' to work'' means, as well as on the impulse of desire and of the feeling of love... :
What is a moment of infinity, of love? Is it just a moment that came from nowhere, or is it all that this moment contains in itself and thanks to the other? Is it not both the accomplishment and the continuation of a necessary, inevitable existential work? A line is a continuity of dots, pigments…’’
P.L.: "Would you characterize your approach as erotic? Why?"
S.B. : "For about four years, I've been thinking a lot about this: the erotic...
Eroticism is a term associated with poetry, the unspoken, and modesty (in french, the word is better : ’’pudeur’’). Even without nudity, there can be a question of eroticism... And even in nudity, there can be a question of ’’pudeur’’...
This is something a friend, Ivan Pinkava, invited me to rethink, in my work... The question of eroticism is interesting, especially today: in this world run by an artificial intelligence... - a world claiming to be increasingly liberated and open in speech - sexually, morally - but which increasingly easily associates eroticism with indecency - a world motivated by an increasingly castrating, moralizing, gratuitously sadistic spirit as technology becomes more refined and allows for more and more violence in mentalities… A world less and less inclined to language, to poetry, to tenderness, gentleness, merit, recognition, honor, appreciation of others and of their differences: ultimately, a world increasingly dehumanized, perverse, spiritually and intellectually impoverished, increasingly sterile, with less and less capacity for love. So much to say about it… But, the question of the erotic in this world: what is eroticism, for me? The sensitive? The carnal? The instantaneous understanding of desire and pleasure in itself? The awakened sensitive? The wonder of the awakened sensitive? The search for the wonder of the awakened sensitive? There, it is already an aspiration, a movement: the desire for a movement in oneself of which one already has an intuition, a knowledge... A desire for perfection and sublimation of the sensitive, sensual, amorous movement... And who says perfection, also says modernization: eroticism is something very archaic and very modern at the same time. It is a desire to perfect the romantic project, a sensual projection that transcends all fashions, all politics - which is part of a most distant collective human consciousness: as a reminder, eroticism was born almost at the same time that Man began to learn how to paint on cave walls. It is the transition from bestiality to humanism: it is the birth of modernity, the birth of the movement of modernization of the human by the human. Eroticism is born from the desire to sublimate the act of seduction between two beings, to magnify the act of reproduction between two beings. It is an act that has passed from the 'bestial' stage to the 'human' stage: to the point of wanting to show this act, to want to show this evolution, this spiritual elevation, and to paint it on cave walls... It is one of the most important stages in the development of our civilizations and the human psyche. And I consider my approach to be an erotic approach, yes, more and more... Especially in this work which, no less than describing a love struggle, describes the struggles that I perceive as a human and as an artist in this world.
S.B.: "The Genesis... It's the absence…
I started photographing this series at the end of a work on love - with my girlfriend - called ''G.''
At her house, a concrete wall had often caught my eye. I was drawn to this wall, but I didn't really know why... Came a time when the feeling of love between Gabrielle and I cooled a little. I was saddened by it...
To photograph is an act of expressing the love of seeing and the love of being. But there you have it, no more photos, a love that was fading, the absence of that sparkle, the pain of the absence...
And one day, my gaze turns again to that concrete wall, and I understand a little better why...
Despite the difficulties, I saw in this wall a way to revive our love, a way to tell certain aspects of love and life.
P.L.: "What do you want to convey through it?"
S.B.: "Conveying isn't my primary concern... I mean : the creative act is first and foremost about transcribing very intimate things that may come through you. As an artist, it's above all about expressing what's happening within you that's important... Then, we're all similar; obviously, we'll all experience questions that can be shared at some point in our lives. In this work, which is originally a series of photographic sequences, I wanted to express a point of view on what '' to work'' means, as well as on the impulse of desire and of the feeling of love... :
What is a moment of infinity, of love? Is it just a moment that came from nowhere, or is it all that this moment contains in itself and thanks to the other? Is it not both the accomplishment and the continuation of a necessary, inevitable existential work? A line is a continuity of dots, pigments…’’
P.L.: "Would you characterize your approach as erotic? Why?"
S.B. : "For about four years, I've been thinking a lot about this: the erotic...
Eroticism is a term associated with poetry, the unspoken, and modesty (in french, the word is better : ’’pudeur’’). Even without nudity, there can be a question of eroticism... And even in nudity, there can be a question of ’’pudeur’’...
This is something a friend, Ivan Pinkava, invited me to rethink, in my work... The question of eroticism is interesting, especially today: in this world run by an artificial intelligence... - a world claiming to be increasingly liberated and open in speech - sexually, morally - but which increasingly easily associates eroticism with indecency - a world motivated by an increasingly castrating, moralizing, gratuitously sadistic spirit as technology becomes more refined and allows for more and more violence in mentalities… A world less and less inclined to language, to poetry, to tenderness, gentleness, merit, recognition, honor, appreciation of others and of their differences: ultimately, a world increasingly dehumanized, perverse, spiritually and intellectually impoverished, increasingly sterile, with less and less capacity for love. So much to say about it… But, the question of the erotic in this world: what is eroticism, for me? The sensitive? The carnal? The instantaneous understanding of desire and pleasure in itself? The awakened sensitive? The wonder of the awakened sensitive? The search for the wonder of the awakened sensitive? There, it is already an aspiration, a movement: the desire for a movement in oneself of which one already has an intuition, a knowledge... A desire for perfection and sublimation of the sensitive, sensual, amorous movement... And who says perfection, also says modernization: eroticism is something very archaic and very modern at the same time. It is a desire to perfect the romantic project, a sensual projection that transcends all fashions, all politics - which is part of a most distant collective human consciousness: as a reminder, eroticism was born almost at the same time that Man began to learn how to paint on cave walls. It is the transition from bestiality to humanism: it is the birth of modernity, the birth of the movement of modernization of the human by the human. Eroticism is born from the desire to sublimate the act of seduction between two beings, to magnify the act of reproduction between two beings. It is an act that has passed from the 'bestial' stage to the 'human' stage: to the point of wanting to show this act, to want to show this evolution, this spiritual elevation, and to paint it on cave walls... It is one of the most important stages in the development of our civilizations and the human psyche. And I consider my approach to be an erotic approach, yes, more and more... Especially in this work which, no less than describing a love struggle, describes the struggles that I perceive as a human and as an artist in this world.
