Blog flash007 de Bruno Baltzer

Bruno Baltzer is an artist-photographer, or in other terms, as per Luxembourgish legislation, a Professional Independent Artist…

read all

download pdf file 4,8Mo

Proceeding principally from a relational aesthetic, Bruno Baltzer’s approach as an observer acts in relation to time, its depth and its traces. His research leads to works of sensitivity, which reveal personal intimacy. Three of his most recent works were shown in Luxembourg at the beginning of 2010. At the MUDAM, which recently acquired two works from the photographic series “after midnight“, a series which uses hybrid photographic techniques, and which presented them in its exhibition “brave new world“. Once again at the MUDAM, “en vœux-tu en voilà“, a video installation for 19 monitors, was shown as part of an artistic commission organised by the museum. Finally at the Casino Luxembourg Forum d’Art Contemporain in the exhibition “everyday(s)”, “My Fathers Glory“, series 3, an installation of 16 photographic works was shown.

Bruno Baltzer’s photographic approach establishes relationships with the world. It was favoured by three factors: A practical training in light and the mastery of the camera motivated by an encounter with beauty in terms of “fashion“. A reflex of recording daily actions developed during grim years of his life by writing intimate journals, which function as true mirrors of the soul. And finally, a deliberately independent existence living abroad

Bruno Baltzer was born in Provence, France, in 1965. He lived until the age of 20 between the southern suburbs of Paris and the Vaucluse. His first 10 years were spent within an exclusively family space. A life of primary school, home, and school holidays was supported by his teacher parents.

In 1985 his parents left their school provided lodging and as well as their children in order to retire near Avignon. Suddenly Bruno discovered a new space of liberty before him. He avidly plunged into it. His first act of emancipation was to break off his studies in chemistry in order to find employment in a studio of fashion photography. There he received practical training from among others, Nick Knight, whose personal assistant he later became, Javier Valhonrat, and Henry Leutwyler.

A complete shift to the life of a photographer was thwarted by an inextinguishable fear of reality as well as a need for emancipation from his mentors. Putting his photographic ambitions aside, he embarked on a new confrontation with existence rejecting the teaching that he had received until then. A life of movement between London, Paris, Geneva, and Mouscron in Belgium was punctuated by sessions of behavioural therapy. During this time, writing began to replace photography as the tool he used to bear witness to daily life.

A stop in Luxembourg lead to a decision to remain there. This marked the beginning of his life as an adult. The quarter of the Grund, a biological café-restaurant during the day, a photo laboratory at night at which he managed everything, and his customers became the new territories for his research and the first witnesses of his new existence.

It is here in Luxembourg, detached from his earlier influences, that Bruno Baltzer began as well his life as a photographer. He was 30 years old.

The quarter, its character, and its inhabitants were among the first subjects of his photographs, the walls of the city his first gallery. From local night time wandering to self-financed photographic residencies abroad (Lisbon, New Orleans, Sicily, Chilean Patagonia, Helsinki), his work developed, affirmed itself, and began to appear in public. The event in 1999 “ black and white notes from New Orleans “, a large-scale series of portraits of musicians, shown in the streets first brought him to notice.

“Eyetalks“, an artistic work using diverse media, placed the living being at the centre of his preoccupations. “Eyetalks” ponders the multiple and singular identities of its photographic subjects. The different modes of portrayal (adornment of façades, Internet sites, databases, urban video installations, films of animated photography) encouraged the subjects to contribute to the organisation of “post events”.

It was from this moment on that the mise-en-scène of Bruno’s shots began to be marked by a predetermined strategy and process for their realisation.

Work began to take off starting in 2002 enabling Bruno to realise his aspiration to live from photography. He received his first institutional commissions including the Musée National d’Histoire Naturelle for the annual “night of the museums”, the Centre de Recherche et de Documentation sur les Migrations Humaines, the Centre National de l’Audiovisuel, and the Cinémathèque. He responded to these invitations by appropriating the themes, subjects, and objectives of the commissions as his own and committing himself completely to them. A new capacity henceforth revealed itself to him: that of managing an intense emotional flow perceptible in the smallest details of his numerous images. He lived in photography.

Begun in 2004, the photographic series “After Midnight“ presents the enigmatic and enchanting universe of the Luxembourg fun fair, Schueberfouer. Over four years, the photographer took pictures of its strange landscape. In the silence of the night, the dazzling attractions, transformed into decors without characters, appear in a large-scale format. The work evokes an intense moment in Luxembourg life while bearing witness to a universal imaginary world in which childhood, deserted spaces, and dreams all come together. Seen through the uninhabited night, the fair reveals aspects never seen before. This series was recognised and purchased by Luxembourgish institutions such as the Mudam, the Ministère de la Culture, and the Musée d’Histoire de la Ville de Luxembourg. As with his series “Octave Reconstruite” (Octave Reconstructed) commissioned by the CNA, Bruno Baltzer has not only tamed the techniques of digital collage based on film negatives, dubbed by him “reconstructions”, but he has also pushed them to their limits in collaborating with a Parisian photo laboratory.

In 2005, he formed the association jusquici_agence artistique. Jusqu’ici’s goal is to favour the production, management, and diffusion of sonic, visual, and multimedia creations based on current processes for diffusion and communication. It favours scientific and artistic collaborations. Jusqu’ici positions itself on the cultural scene of Luxembourg and the Grande Région as an artistic laboratory which seeks out, initiates, and produces original encounters in the domains of sound and image. In 2006, the enterprise flash007 began. Flash007 is a collaborative multimedia Internet platform dedicated to culture and principally to artistic events. Envisioned and directed under his care and realised by the centre de Recherche Public Gabriel Lippmann, flash007 has been for nearly two years the principal artistic enterprise in Luxembourg bringing together artists, the public, cultural institutions, local community associations, the world of research, the media, and the world of mobile phones in a project of photographic, video, and sound documentation for Luxembourg, European Capital of Culture 2007.

Today Flash007 proposes the commission, realisation, and exhibition of artistic works. In a pedagogical sense, it has developed workshops and interventions in different public centres and museums such as Casino Luxembourg. It has also been during this period and in this spirit of involvement that Bruno Baltzer began his first interventions at the Ecole Supérieure des Beaux Arts in France

In early 2009, ever more permeable to the world of contemporary art and its subtle revelations, Bruno Baltzer began, without abandoning what he has done up until then, a photographic and video work in which intimacy appears and moves forward to occupy the entire frame of his images. He documents fading worlds, places of intense human or natural activity, and their inhabitants. He seeks to reveal their subtle aspects, their links, and new meanings of the world. “My Father’s Glory” shown for the first time in 2010 during the exhibition “everyday(s)” at Casino Luxembourg Forum d’Art Contemporain anticipates this new development.

His territories are widening once again. He has begun working with students of the arts at the Université de Metz. In addition, an artistic collaboration has drawn him to Italy and another to China.