courtesy Galerie Bertrand Grimont @
"Vilnius", "Liege", "Odessa" urban wanderings all subjective Manneke Thomas, photographer, where the random places, characters begin as many unfinished narratives ...
Three cities, three places that form an imaginary triangle, which seem to oppose in this geographical area, political , a cultural Europe. What do they share? A priori, little except the fact of belonging to this common space.
Should we not rather look elsewhere? The side of a personal geography, an approach that seeks to restore somehow a form of mental landscape rather than physical, intimate geography whose common point is Thomas Manneke?
Odessa @ Thomas Manneke
@ gallery courtesy Bertrand Grimont
's photographs Thomas Manneke do not seem to confirm our view in employment common themes, internal consistency evident recurrences, marking their attendance each series.
Inside each of them, either pass the photographs from portrait to landscape areas. Certainly, the characters cross in these photographs are dealing with each of the respective cities, live side by side in one way or the landscapes presented. Thomas Manneke we do not deliver the keys. The subjects seem to be little relationship between them, we even provide a disparate world in which they take place.
Nor has any more to give our view, an identification, a marker except sometimes to play cultural reflex, to cling to a few faces, a few architectures, to speculate on a possible location, but little else. This girl, who dances, for example, or the family of "gypsies" or "Roma": Liège, Vilnius, Odessa?
Vilnius @ Thomas Manneke
@ gallery courtesy Bertrand Grimont
What relationship establish, for example, between an aerial view of Vilnius, taken in black and white photography and another in the same series, this fois_çi color where two girls watching a stream?
A feeling of confusion reinforced by the non-unitary choice of sizes, different in many cases, carriers which combine analog and digital, as the passage, a priori arbitrary, black and white to color by topic ... All this seems, at first playing at Thomas Manneke, the willingness to lose our vision and commit ourselves towards a floating uncertain, which erased any established discourse on reality.
A subjective vision without a tangible object Trial.
We find ourselves in-between, a no man's land, which leads us and plays imperceptibly between documentary and intimacy ...
Liege @ Thomas Manneke
@ gallery courtesy Bertrand Grimont
But gradually, these photographs show, just a dialogue between discrete and subtle, and they with us an attitude, a look, ... posture constants emerge, the architectures are photographed as emptied of its inhabitants that are perceived as signs.
Soon to construct fragments of unfinished narratives. Links are forged ... Narratives internal to each photograph, as with this girl sitting alone, among adults and the detritus of a party, whose sole companion, a statue of a character like this boy, beer in hand, which seems to have grown too fast, a sort_il partying with his suit? Or as in this series Lithuanian where the same character, a girl, was taken into contexts and different situations: at night, and then only in a cemetery and finally immersed in contemplation to an invisible outside
Manneke we talk about shelving, edge, in a slight side step loneliness that comes sketch characters, the universality of their conditions. Whatever living in Liege, Odessa and Vilnius to Vilnius this girl gazing out a window invisible horizon, or the illuminated tombs of a cemetery, to be dancing on the dance floor ... Or this one kid sitting in the midst of adults in celebration.
Liege @ Thomas Manneke
@ gallery courtesy Bertrand Grimont
Time freezes for a time suspended on the edge between childhood and adulthood, Thomas is the Manneke witnessed an upset child in search of an invisible vanishing point. A dull melancholy seizes us, a "je ne sais quoi" indefinable nostalgia and melancholy, saudade takes us in the density of looks, these portraits of these architectures empty ...
A sculpture in Liege mistake like a work of socialist realism, is a man. The mouth of the sculpures is masked with red, actually a gay cruising spot ... This girl placed between the legs of two adults, this other girl, alone on her bed surrounded by adult revelers ... Again Manekke confronts us with the periphery of things ...
Perce then watermark, a look at those left behind, their silence ... And, without dramatic ... Manekke slides her photographs in the interstices, the spaces left vacant where joins and intimate documentary.
Vilnius @ Thomas Manneke
@ gallery courtesy Bertrand Grimont
Beside a young Lithuanian, a young man, hidden, watching a offscreen. Two daughters back, watching the course of a river ... elusive
A final yet, a painter strikes a pose, in front of his easel, behind a mask. This recovery of any personal "Las Meninas" by Velazquez, commits a face to face with the photographer, with us, almost ironic.
A confrontation between the painter and his model, between photographer and subject ... Is this an answer, a clue?
Thomas Manneke he invites us to lose our eyes ...
Thomas Manneke
"Vilnius, Odessa, Cork
Until December 31, 2010
Galerie Bertrand Grimont
47 rue de Montmorency
75013 Paris
+0331 42 71 30 87
+0336 85 45 01 30
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