"Nobody understands me, because nobody knows who I am". This is the somewhat ironic statement of Piccolino, the dwarf from the works of Pär Lagerkvist, after the massacre of all his enemies. Piccolino excluded himself from the world of the "ordinary" man, he was only able to look at their weaknesses. "I have often remarked that sometimes this way of thinking can only inspire fear. This can emerge as a first reaction and sometimes is not a reflection of our real selves." A few centuries after the Italian renaissance where this sense of intrigue existed, human sentiment has little changed.
Why then has a photographer chosen to use models of a small size? Firstly, the history of looking for the unusual is a specialty in this artform especially when the subject is out of the ordinary. For dwarfs they have always been subject of unwanted gazes. When reading an article by the painter David Hockney, I learnt that he used the verse of W.H. Auden to show his own inspiration: « For me the material of art, is human clay. » I recalled that this small size sized sculptor who worked with clay and who became a photographer of nudes, had compared himself to a material that I could fashion at my will. It is this that I love in my work, to be able to choose my own material, for me "people", to get to meet them on roads that I did not know, and above all to be able to show all this to others through my art.
Without any desire to do nice "human pictures", just a willingness to show the exceptions or the differences. Just for the pleasure of photography. To look and to learn to see something different than that which is given me to see. For me often in our art, the people that we do not like the look of are left in the shade: "Nobody understands me, because nobody knows who I am", as Piccolino said.
Why then has a photographer chosen to use models of a small size? Firstly, the history of looking for the unusual is a specialty in this artform especially when the subject is out of the ordinary. For dwarfs they have always been subject of unwanted gazes. When reading an article by the painter David Hockney, I learnt that he used the verse of W.H. Auden to show his own inspiration: « For me the material of art, is human clay. » I recalled that this small size sized sculptor who worked with clay and who became a photographer of nudes, had compared himself to a material that I could fashion at my will. It is this that I love in my work, to be able to choose my own material, for me "people", to get to meet them on roads that I did not know, and above all to be able to show all this to others through my art.
