Melos (Signed)

Guillaume Lebrun
Melos (Signed)

Photographs: Guillaume Lebrun

Text: René Daligault and Rémi Coignet

Publisher: Filigrane edition

96 pages

Pictures: 62

Year: 2016

ISBN: 978-2-35046-382-7

Price: 30 €

Comments: Illustrated hardcover, 26,9 by 21,6cm, black an white photographies and colors. Signed by the photographer.

Melos is a book between darkness and hope. The image above these lines should alert the attentive viewer. On this old postcard, annotated by the sender marked “Far Eastern and sad hello.” While geographical annotations attest to the complexity of the region.
This incipit seems to sum up the view reached by Guillaume Lebrun-journey that led from Istanbul to Thessaloniki via neighboring Bulgaria. These places are one of the crucibles of European and Mediterranean civilizations. But they are also an area where identities, languages, nationalities, religions have continued to object, trying to hold sway over each other.
The unity of place, the community of destiny are reflected in the portraits of young people has drawn the photographer. Impossible for me to determine whether the girl or boy are Greek, Bulgarian and Turkish.
The fracture, it is evident in the landscape as in the detail views. It often results in the work of Guillaume Lebrun by the inability to see, which is opposed, of course, the desire to see. The photographer but also that of the viewer. Desire that counteracts the author. For this, it deploys various strategies. That the veil first. As this red curtain that leaves hardly reflected the view from a hotel room, or the striped window that hides the beauty of Hagia Sophia, or the rain that erases the contours of the Bosphorus. […]

Rémi Coignet