Photographs of the Edge of the World "...taken on the coast of Aquitaine, France looking towards the United States or could have been taken on the coast of the US looking towards France. We share the Atlantic." Hence the FrenchConnection.
The idea that a photographer does nothing, but press on a button while the painter works laboriously on his canvas is one of the great prejudices of the general public against photography. In truth, photography like painting takes time. The first artist waits for the right moment to snap his camera and the wait may take minutes, hours, days. The latter keeps his brush in hand until he feels it is the right moment to stop.
Photographing landscape demands a certain type of relationship with nature. Firstly it is a physical and concrete environment. The photographer must both try to predict and follow its caprices. The painter can paint his feelings into his landscape, the photographer must wait until nature presents him with the image that corresponds to his emotions.
Robert Jaurès photographs are the direct result of a negative created using a Hasselblatt camera on a tripod. The negative (four in x four in) was printed using color emulsion on photographic paper before being transformed into an Iris print for this series. Water based long conservation inks are printed on Acid free Arches Paper to produce this edition limited to six prints. The painterly quality of these Iris prints linked to the realism of the photographic process transports the viewer to a place where they feel themselves to be at the edge of the world.
Robert Jaurès was born in Brittany, France in 1950. He debuted as an actor in his teens; he began drawing and painting during the seventies, while designing posters and scenery for the theater. In 1989, the artist began working with Xing Xoa Cheng, curator and professor at the Institute of Fine Arts in Beijing, China. Xing Xoa Cheng introduced Robert Jaurès to Asian culture and art. Afterwards, Robert Jaurès began taking photographs influenced by the bichromie of Chinese calligraphy.
Robert Jaurès has exhibited many times. His paintings and drawings were first shown at the Gallery Raspail, Paris in 1985. In 1990 the artist did a series of paintings on the subject of Danse for the Ballet Festival at Varna, Bulgaria. In 1993, he showed the photographs he took during the shooting of Eclaircie (scenario by Robert Jaurès inspired by the poem by Jacques Prevert) at the Cabanon de Montmartre. The following year photographs of American and Americans were shown at Neuchatel, Switzerland. In 1996, he curated an exhibition at the National Gallery, Dakar, Senegal. At the same time, he founded the first Senegalese photo agency, Nataal. In 1999 he filmed and photographed in Jamaica. Last year at the Festival of Avignon and this year in Paris, he is performing in the “Raison d’etre de la Literature” by Goa Xingian, Prix Nobel 2000. Robert Jaurès plays Everyman and himself, a photographer. He has lived on the Atlantic coast of France since 2000. “Photographs on the Edge of the World” are his first series of color photographs inspired by the ocean. They were shown at Gallery Nataal, Arcachon, France in 2001 and at Lalique, New York, NY during the Summer of 2002.