Frederic Joncour

Life moves too fast, and ever since I was a child, I've been trying to hold it back as hard as I can. My photographic creations, mostly still lifes encountered in the undergrowth and along the paths, have no other ambition than to try to slow down the time that slips away from our lives. I shoot on black and white negative film, to make sure I don't work too fast, and for a few other reasons too :)

I'm an Artisan d'Art, a rare title for a French photographer. I was born in France in 1965 and live in Provence. The photographers who influence me most are Edward Weston, Denis Brihat, August Sander, Nadar, Eugène Atget and Walker Evans.

All the photographs presented here were taken on black and white negative film. I develop my films myself manually, then digitise them and devote a great deal of time to post-production. I then print my photographs on my own machines using pigment inks on long-life baryta paper.

I've been photographing and working in the b/w lab since I was a child (with my parents). I'm a pragmatic and dispassionate user of the black and white Zone System (since 1988). I wrote and published a book in 2018 about it. I taught zone-system at Studio Harcourt in Paris in the 90s. I also taught at an engineering school in Evry. Here, in my studio in Hyères, I pass on my knowledge of silver photography, adapted to digital techniques, to people in the process of professionalizing their skills.

Group exhibition at the Villa Théo in Le Lavandou "Intimes intérieurs" (still life) winter 2024, with works by Suzanne Valadon, Olivier Debré, Auguste Chabaud, Bernard Plossu, Françoise Nunez, Bernard Buffet...