FELICITAS (SIGNED AND NUMBERED)

Gilles-Henri Polge
FELICITAS (SIGNED AND NUMBERED)

Photographs: Gilles-Henri Polpe

Publisher: Self-published

122 pages

Pictures: 261

Year: 2023

Price: 120 €

Comments: Hardcover in a slipcase, 26,7 x 21,7 cm, b&w photographs. Limited edition of 300. Signed by Gilles-Henri Pole. Design: Hikari Machiguchi.

This book is a direct collaboration between a graphic designer and a photographer. The graphic designer, Hikari Machiguchi, perfectly understood the meaning and intention of my photographic work: to put together a body of work showing the wide variety of drawings and media, to go beyond the anecdotal to reveal a joyful expression of sexuality, to help us imagine the author of the graffiti at work and the thought that guides his gesture. The photographs, solo or in tableau, are all vertical. They are presented opposite each other on two pages, creating a close relationship between the images. The five sequential images of a story that I would call "Fascination" (007 to 016) are each organised on a page with a visual commentary on the facing page. What's more, the graffiti in image 011 is repeated in 015, later re-photographed, anthropomorphised and transformed into a face. Typological similarities, for example figures (065-066), graffiti on posters (114-131), sexes pointing upwards or downwards (148-247); thematic similarities, for example inscriptions, with or without drawings (045-054, 071-088), ejaculations (091- 104), sexual acts (112-113, 137); in opposition (black on white vs. white on black, for example); or similarities based on simple visual affinity. The final pages (250-259) are about love. Then we pack up (260). And the last image in the book (261) was chosen by Hikari Machiguchi because it is the last image in the book. And the last image in the book (261) was chosen by Hikari Machiguchi because it evokes the Japanese way of greeting. Gilles-Henri Polge.

(Afterword by Gilles-Henri Polpe, translated from French)