Grégoire Alexandre 

Sans titre 2, Histoires parallèles, villa Noailles 

Sans titre 2

About the artist

Grégoire Alexandre graduated from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure de la Photographie in Arles. In 2003, his work was noticed in the photo selection of the International Festival of Fashion and Photography (Hyères), after which he started working for the press (Wallpaper*, Vanity Fair, Esquire UK, Libération ...), the record industry (collaborations with Étienne Daho, Metronomy, Yelle, Yann Tiersen, Bertrand Burgalat, April March), and in advertising (Westin, Sony, Le Printemps, Orange, Louis Vuitton, Citroën, eBay, Absolut).
Through his work, he seeks to mitigate the austerity of photographic studios and their four bare walls with a form of light-hearted and mischievous poetry, discreetly yet constantly filtering through quirky set layouts often featuring elements characteristic of a photo-studio environment. In 2011, he obtained a photography commission from the Villa Noailles, an art centre in Hyères (South of France) dedicated to fashion, photography, design and architecture. Grégoire Alexandre chose the villa itself, with its labyrinthine cubist architecture, to deploy his dreamlike fantasies.

Interview

Built in the 1920s by architect Robert Mallet-Stevens for Charles and Marie-Laure de Noailles, a couple of patrons with close links to the artistic avant-garde of the day, Villa Noailles sits atop a hill overlooking the town of Hyères and the Mediterranean. When did you first discover the villa? What was your first impression?
I discovered the villa in 2003, while taking part in the fashion and photography festival. I immediately perceived the villa as a place of encounters, exchanges and culture, but also of receptions. It is a huge and maze-like house, but is also full of surprises and hidden corners of more human dimensions.

How easy was it to manage a carte blanche assignment for someone much more used to working in a studio environment?
I’m not only more familiar with the studio, I’m also more accustomed to commission work, so I had to work on defining my project and its limits. The villa’s geographic boundaries were a good start; I then relied on the history of the place itself, how it was designed as a holiday home combining creation and recreation. I re-wrote fictional elements based on aspects of the villa’s history, in turn inviting creative individuals to become involved.

The history of Villa Noailles is populated with many illustrious guests, among which Man Ray and Luis Buñuel: was this heritage intimidating, or simply an exciting source of inspiration?
When you explore the villa’s archives, you stumble upon major figures in 20th century art (Dalí, Cocteau, Giacometti…) and cannot help but consider the wealth of art created by these great minds… but sometimes, you find a picture of Man Ray (he is the character through the white mask in my image) wearing a colander on his head during a party at the villa, and that makes you feel much less overwhelmed, and more eager to convey the light-heartedness and spontaneity they were capable of.

There are many shadows and ghosts in these photographs. What’s the atmosphere in the villa like at night?

It was only well into the shooting that I noticed the recurrence of shadows and ghostly figures. Not just ghosts of the former occupants and architect, but also phantoms of fictional events and unlikely constructions (one of the black forms in the picture of the villa is actually a cut-out silhouette added to the shot). 
The villa always remains - day or night - a place where anything goes.

Limited edition, numbered and signed. 

Selected shows and awards

Histoires Parallèles, villa Noailles, Hyères (France), 2011
Winner of the HSBC Award for Photography, 2009
Fashion in the Mirror, The Photographer's Gallery, London, 2008
?Was It a Car or a Cat I saw?, Rencontres d'Arles, curated by Christian Lacroix, 2008

Selected publications

Histoires Parallèles, villa Noailles - Archibooks, 2011
Grégoire Alexandre, Prix HSBC pour la Photographie, Actes Sud, 2009

Details

& order

Grégoire Alexandre 
Sans titre 2, Histoires parallèles, villa Noailles

2010-2011

Technical information

Pigment print on Hahnemühle FineArt Baryta paper - limited edition, numbered and signed certificate.

Dimensions

32 x 24 cm, Edition of 100 200.00 €




By the same artist

Grégoire Alexandre


By the same curator