BACKSTAGE

I was afraid to not know how to speak about Delphine Warin’s photographs, because I received them, if I may say it like this, before, during, and even after—but in fact I realise that I like them, not because I know them, but because they surprise me. It’s not “Mississippi One”, it’s another movie, not mine, the roles have changed—it is she who is watching us, who is on the lookout, who is stealing our images—and the best part is that we have no idea, and you can tell… 

Me, I’m obsessed and elsewhere, somewhere between the electric cords; Etienne, the cameraman, is even more alone in front of the taut canvas; Bernard, the sound engineer, is completely enclosed; outside on the street corner, Jeannot, passing by, steals the trolley, and Aimé, the magician, is lost in a cloud of confetti.

It’s the other side of the looking glass—out of context and in silence. I’m aware that the tiger is more violent when he roars, the car is more tragic covered in canvas, the horse even stranger when we see only his eye, then on the television screen where there is already the mystery of the image inside the image—I love when an anonymous hand hides another face—and all of theses instants are fixed forever in my memory, and I’m impressed, literally, by another way of looking at things, and so grateful to have seen what was not expected, to have had it shown to me, and I say to myself, what a wonderful profession, photographer, how infinite. Each way of looking, in the process of making it one’s own, becomes another….   

Sarah Moon