PHOTOGRAPHIES D'AMEUBLEMENT

AFTER ERIK SATIE

2015

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Found photographs mounted on various supports

Various sizes (25 x 35 cm approximatively)

When Erik Satie created his furniture music in the 1920’s, the music recording, reproduction and broadcasting means that are so familiar today didn’t exist. Music, either learned or popular, was played by musicians and destined to true listening. Satie was the first to envision a world in which music could become a sound background to which nobody would pay attention, and this is how he composed musical pieces whose sole ambition was to become decorative.

Of course, there is a parallel between the evolution of music and that of photography, since both have seen their status and use changed with the analog and then digital reproduction and broadcasting technique, which made them mass consumption products. Thus, the twin of «furniture music», that we now call «elevator music», could be the poster that reproduces a famous photograph, such as Le baiser dev l’Hôtel de Ville by Doisneau or Le peintre de la tour Eiffel by Riboud. it could also be what we call in a derogatory manner «wallpaper» when we want to qualify a photograph that is simply beautiful, agreeable to the eye with no actual meaning nor any kind of conceptual stake, inviting us to an easy-viewing, the same way there is an easy-listening

But, to my knowledge, History didn’t witness a photography Satie that is to say, a photographer who would have had as a stated ambition, to produce, amongst a corpus of top-rated pieces, an ensemble of photographs whose sole function would have been to furnish its surroundings. What could have these photographs represented, what form would they have had ? These furniture photographs constitute an absurd proposition in response to these questions.