Bernard Faucon: clear waters like the tears of childhood

“l’eau claire… comme le sel des larmes d’enfance.”

—— Arthur Rimbaud, Mémoire

For many, Bernard Faucon is not merely a name, but a wondrous journey into the depths of the senses. From the plaster childhoods of Provençal summers, to the divine play of light in empty rooms, and then to the written aphorisms inscribed across the folds of the earth, he gives form to dreams through a directorial approach to staging. He seals the blurred poetics between homeland, childhood, fiction, and reality within the amber of film, constructing a spiritual world apart from reality, one that eternally shimmers with the aura of innocence.

As an optical brand that has long focused on photographic art and continuously expanded the boundaries of image-making, SIGMA presents this encounter with Faucon’s artistic universe in the form of a special exhibition. Through its pursuit of technical excellence, SIGMA safeguards the purity of the image, just as Faucon uses the lens to construct moments on the verge of disappearance. Through these timeless classics that transcend eras, we seek to explore the infinite possibilities between tools and expression, recording and dream-making, and to pay tribute, within the eternal stillness of the lens, to every guardian of the art of the image.

Born in Provence in 1950, after studying philosophy and theology, Bernard Faucon became one of the pioneers of staged photography. Having made his first pictures in 1976, he was convinced that staging was the swan song of the photographic medium, the last step before the rein of the pure, digital, publicity image. He made a decision to put an end to his work in 1995. The belief in the power of photographic truth had waned to such a degree that it no longer justified building “real fictions.”