Sebastien Chou by John Calavera

WHO IS SEBASTIEN CHOU ?
-----------------------

i am born in Lille (North of France) in 1972
iam 37 years old so
I studied first a year in visual communication to take finaly the direction of the Fine Arts School .
I works now as photographer on internet
but i spend my free time by walking
& taking photos
but listening music
Buying some old snapshots on ebay .
passing in the Airports and
using the highways


How did you realized that you want to become a photographer ?
------------------------------------------------------------
I didn t realize that i wanted to become a photographer
until now .
but by remembering very far ago ,i guess my father gave me undirectly the desir
very early to produce some images (imagination).

Son of the JFK's Hopes,he had a fascination for the American way and obviously for its cinema .

But he didn t mind of the storys ,the scenarios too much .
What he liked ,the only question he cared in fact was :

"How it is made ?")

He was Doctor and at this side of the Screen too...
at this side of the Dream;
The mecanism of the dream
like the mecanism of a pulmon.

...how to create ...the illusion ..he liked to explain me this .

He proposed me to play with his cam a day ,(the first time i did) ,
by explaining me
that with a machine like this ,
and by finding the good position the good angle with me in front ,
he could easily make me bigger than the effel tower itself .)

I ve got the photo somewhere in a box .
You can see me ,a finger on the top of the
tower
with an interrogativ expression on my face .
I realized later (some weeks after)
by seing the result on paper
what he wanted to show me there.

Was just fantastic and so easy.
What a potential for a so small object.

I was kid at this time
and he is gone now since many years
but i guess he had a sort of beautiful naivity in the look
A intact kid's eye mixed with a certain medical powder of pragmatism .
A scientifik papoo's wonderstruck ))
Something like this .
He was always estonished by a plane in the sky at 40.

For sur this is my own vision of him ;
My own framed angle ,
one stopped in time too
and maybe an illusion i created .
But i received this proposition of game
many times throught him .

That s why i decided to call me
EYE TOY
when i opened my page on flickr .
This is a toy really .
Something to play with .

Something Linked with a Georges Melies mind too
... an infinity of possibilitys for the eye always able to believe.

www.flickr.com/photos/eye-toy/3773593782/in/set-72157617465938550/


But
after this i never entered in an image,
in a photo
or a movie like before too .
Or if yes so,
always with a feet in the backstage
or
an eyes behind the lens by analyzing the "how" .
(so a risk too by the other side for the believer ).

The notion of fake ,the notion of reality
could mix themselves sometimes in my mind ,
counciously or uncounciously.


Later appeared the video at my home
with the possibility to make appear and desappear
the things ,the persons
and to turn off the sun by
a simple cutting effect ...

I started to make some super-home -productions too
with a title on a piece of paper ,
a begining
and a end ,
to add a little bit more suspens for the sundays
and romantism for the weedings.

I really experimented there a little
more of the power of the images.
(and there too for the best and not only)

i learned i guess there more than nowhere else
how to frame
to narrow a silence
to make a link between two things separated
to organise a time
a place ..a surface
a situation
a moment .

So yes by coming back very far
i guess my photosensibility came from
an angle of "view"
an angle of "me" :)
in front of the eiffel tower

After this and until now
this is just a logic of continuity

My studys
my actual work
for sur

but before everything
mys private garden i ve got now
this pleasure to take photos everyday
The only place where the Possible stayed
possible,
in my eyes ....
and above all these years .



What equipment do you use?
--------------------------
I ve got an affectiv relation with my cam
not a tecknikal or technologikal one
really not .

i could answer u here
like we could talk "Ferrari" about the "cars"
or
"Fender" about "the guitars" ,
but what i care is
what we can do and where we can go with.
I am against the churchs.

So my answer is
"i use a cam i bought in a shop"
)


What do you want to express with your work?
--------------------------------------------


the things wants to talks around
outside of their functions we want to sickly give them always !
Above this
they talks of themself.

the places makes sounds,
they are expressing something already.

they absorbed some emotions
and sweat them .

i am convinced of this physicaly .
we need to listen .

and
i d like very much
to show this
to be a filter
able to show this .

So to answer u
at the first degree of the question :

i d like to express ....Some-thing(s)
:)


What do you think about the modern photography?
------------------------------------------------

Modern?
For me is a nice and funny words when
i think of the Art painting hsitory
coz this way is dead in the 60s.

u mean contempary ?
an Actual way ?

So i don t know
i need to admit (

i don t open books and visits gallerys enought to know if this exist
or i see too much ways possible from where i am
i can t answer you .

what i know is that
There s actually a magma of productions ,
of creation ,
of tendencys
flowing by all the ways .
(there too,for the worste and or the best) .

A total and exponential democratisation of the tools
and the acces to the medias
a scaring
a exiting chao of expression .

some use an holga and not the polas
some other a computer
some are anti pixels
some could explose just to hear the word photoshop
some mix all of them
and the painting is still not dead i guess
ect....

Each minute some milliard of images are took
remixed and digested
and
we just don t have the time to make some "tendencys" anymore i guess.
Me i can t .
or so
the tendency is this one

The years of the speed
this Chao
and ....i am basicaly for ))
because the chao
is a rich seed of Creation in general .


or if really
one appear over all the others
so by my opinion
this is just marketing behind
Like a label ,a stick.

but
i have no idea
really
This is just an impression.

What i know is that
the modernism or the actuality die by a circular logic of the time and progress.
(this is not a "new")

but an emotion can stay untouched over this ...if it is deeply lived
(anyway how and when ).
I hope it )


What are your influences ?
----------------------------

i like the "invisible" of david lynch in general.
His way to put the sensitiv emotion before a narrativ one as driver.
( Must be a super grand PA )

what else ?
strangly i ate all the american series of the 70s when i was kids
The lights of these TV productions were so special ..the shadows so aceptyzed
(i am a bit nostalgik there maybe )
but
the way to frame was so systematic and so scary clean .... the colors ! )
i said "strangly" because
My photostream is everything exept "Pop" by the first look,
But i ate a lot of Soups too .

Hmm what else
Like it comes :

Jacques Tati
for his sweetness and his despotik precision

i listen music a lot
i adored the way of Thurston Moore for exemple
the experimental side of sonic youth for me was a real opening door to many others
and in some way a graphic experience too.

when i listen music
this is graphic in my mind
some curves ,lines passing over the others desapearing and coming back.
some patterns ..like some wall papers behind.

they opened me the door of the free jazz too
the door of coltrane
Sun ra
by passing by the weird scene.
i like instinctiv music and the improvisation
to organize a pleasure to go to a chaotik wall of sounds.


but about photography.....
i ve g ot just not one reference to give u
now :(

oh yes a japenese one someone presented me recently :
YAMAMOTO MASAO ...uff )
Beautifull
www.hackelbury.co.uk/artists/yamamoto/image_library/image_library.html




What type of scenes do you enjoy photographing the most?
--------------------------------------------------------

Without hesitations ...the lights and so the darkness ,the shadows.
This is so fascinating ;
at the same time flat and deep
with so much variations and nuancys possible .

I don t understand why the shadow is not yet considerated as a fundamenetal element ,like the water and the fire )

The "propriety of this element is a real inspiration for me in general;
yes the meeting of the flatness and the dimensional in one
As a stain or a vapor ..depends;
But something ghostly like this.

yes because by definition ?
this is necessarely the visible consequence of an other Presence ...very near )
They are an axis of work and thought for me ...
Theres so many way to "live" a shadow.

i like the things hidden so
or half visible
i like the O-penings in general ,
the holes.
(to fall in or to go out of them )

the clouds ,the ordinary Ufos of our days.

and i came back to the nature the last years
to find this too ,
to the woods,
to see the trees,
to the fields.

i had a real pb with this before
(merci to Anna paola who showed me the way to the reconsciliation )
www.flickriver.com/photos/23046699@N03/popular-interesting/

but defenitely
i guess i am not social ))))
u ll find nobody alive by the way we know
on my pages.



Top 5 movies
----------------------------
Like it comes too :


-"King kong" (the first one) for its naivity /ferocity and inventivity
-"Traffic" of jacques tati (i said why above)
-"Mulhulland drive" /Lynch (too sensual)
-The Idiots /lars van trier (an acid to digest for more relativism )
-The Brown Bunny /V.Gallo (Something is beautiful in this movie :the light the lanscapes ,the faces ,the textures of the roads ,..and this above the scenario a new time and Mr Gallo Himself.