Interview Sebastien Tixier
Photography is a very rich form of expression.
Name: Sebastien Tixier
Hometown: Le Creusot, small old town in France
Style of photography: Urban environment documentary, Staged stories
Type of camera(s): Mamiya RZ67 for my personal work, Canon 5D mkII for digital, some others for special purposes
Website: http://www.sebtix.com
What gives you inspiration?
Everything that affects or touches me, whether it encounters, emotions or life conditions: things that make me think, things that make me angry, things that make me love and things that make me cry. At the end of the day, I think I just want to talk about humanity and life as a whole, its cracks and poetry. So far my work mostly tends to present this as a general questioning about our isolation/urbanization.
What are your influences?
There are obviously a lot of photographers: in random order, I would think of the works of Gregory Crewdson, Nadav Kander, Stephen Shore, Erwin Olaf. Also, Eric Beaudelaire. Geert Goiris, Alec Soth among others. Generally speaking, I find great interest in the various forms of contemporary and emergent photography, and the heritage of the Düsseldorf photography. But I would rather say “image” to a larger extent: I think David Lynch movies aesthetic has certainly been a great inspiration for me. And I was recently thinking that my early courses in painting when I was a teen, especially the static and kind-of-overplayed poses of the models in Renaissance paintings, are probably related to the way I now direct my models to. I am continuously looking at images, in magazines, in the streets, on the web, famous and unknown. It certainly affects my work in one way or another. However, when I start a new photo or documentary, I have no conscious idea at all of the influences it may refer to.
Why did you choose these photos?
These are all photos that I like a lot and that all represent very special meanings or moments to me. They also show a large part of my current work, from the story-telling and staged compositions, through the abandoned island of Hashima heavily filled with History.
What does photography mean to you?
For me, photography is a way to express myself, by formalizing in images things I may not necessary be able to say with words. It’s a part of me as important as language which I could not live without. But what I think is the most striking and interesting in the photographic medium is its ability: as a visually realist form of art. To me, this makes it such a very rich form of expression with so many layers to navigate through.
Photos:
Copyright reserved by Sebastien Tixier
