Intimacy revealed

The Heart of Humanity:

A child-mother awkwardly brushing her cheek against her baby’s head…, the calligrapher Fabienne Verdier, contemplative in her workshop atelier…, an older couple caressing with fond gestures…, a Berber basket-weaver solidly wedged inside an immense basket…, a young clown with head cocked at a haughty angle…, wherever our gaze happens to fall amid Delphine Warin’s body of work, it is as if magnetically drawn to the humanity radiating out from the heart of each photograph.

But if we were obliged to choose only one, it would no doubt be the blind mother whose expression is so remarkably present, brushing her daughter’s long hair with palpable tenderness. In this particular photograph, from the series “Les yeux grands ouverts (Eyes Wide Open)”, is concentrated, all on its own, the essence of her art, her very personal manner of observing the world that functions like a revealer of souls. And her singular interest in emotional “Liens (Bonds)” the central linking theme of her work. Being a witness so as to transmit, making visible the invisible, and offering it to the world—these fragile sensitive bonds that unite us, our bonds of blood and the chosen ones of the heart. “They profoundly move me…,” she shares. Her point of view is empathetic, and this is obvious in her photographs, which are very emotional, very moving. Her observation of the world is loving, both literally and figuratively.

The Essential:

Over time, in both her professional press and personal work, Delphine Warin tends more and more toward shedding all but the essential, which ends up conferring not only density, but corporeality, flesh, to her portraits, which take on a life of their own. As if the sobriety, the absolute sincerity of her photographs not only lay bare the subject’s innermost self, but go beyond the individual to the universal.

Time As Accomplice:

“Time brings all things to maturation,” wrote Rabelais. In any case, time is an essential dimension of Delphine Warin’s photographic approach. Or rather, she says, it no longer exists. Whatever the rhythm, whether it is the rapid and efficient news coverage of an event or a press conference, or, on the contrary, installation “for the duration” to allow her personal themes all the time they need, she uses the same presence, the same listening intensity-sensitive ear. And in this state of alertness, quasi-trance, forcing you to ignore her yet fully present, she listens, watches, feels…, waits, outside of time. And always, the same instantaneity in her photographs! Delphine Warin anticipates the Other with infinite respect. She’s attentive, not intrusive. “I must go through what my subjects are going through to try and understand them, I must become their version of the truth. I need that degree of intimacy, complicity, to feel just. The camera comes after,” she confides. The encounter is enormously fragile. But the result possesses such force!