A L A I N   P A R I S - PHOTOGRAPHER
born in 1955
He is not a photographer but, as he is pleased to say, he goes in for photography. For he combines the technique of the professional with the original joy of the dilettante. In the proper meaning of the term: Italian word, present participle of "dilletaro", "delight", hence "the one who practise an art for love". For the pleasure of the photographic art or rather of the "photografrica" art. Because Alain Paris unceasingly puts this continent in images.
Since nearly ten years, the major part of his productions has been devoted to the Senegal. Bush studio, "Seetsi", "Black Mirages" are various facets of a same passion for a world that both fascinates and moves him. After a stay in Africa, Alain Paris might return with only one or two "rolls". From his many travels in the "black" continent, he has brought only a few pictures of the landscape ("ten, at the very most"), of traditional feasts or other such "exotic" snapshots. For he needs Africa, it's often only a scenery for his photos.

Since 1989, without interrupting his trips, Alain Paris has lived shut up in a studio to "shoot" his Africa. Here and there. With "Montreuil on the stage" (associated with an other photographer), he has realized a surprising "trombinoscope" of the African population of Montreuil. Bush studio, series realized with a medium-format in daylight studio, shows his attachment to the small village of Kafountine (Casamance). It is there that he has created the first "Bush's photographs" school in 1989.

His Africa is not the "phantom Africa".
It is neither the Africa of the ethnologists, the poets or the journalists. It is neither modern nor ancestral, neither poor nor corrupted, neither glad nor sad. It is a woman, a mother or a lover, nude, strange and sensual. Alain Paris gives us to see what Africa has probably the most beautiful and obvious to offer that nobody else would be able to describe. A belly. The fertile one of a mother or the stretched skin of a dancer? Hands. Those of a princess Ashanti of Ghana or of a farmer Diola of Casamance? A nape. The one of an amazon warrior of Congo or of a Parisian top-model? Litheness of the bodies, openness of a look, purity of Africa to which these "Black Mirages" refer, his last realization.

Alain Paris is not only in love with Africa. Since he has invited Africa in his dark room, he is being told to be... his lover.

Régis Michel

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