STORMY TIME 2008
“Stormy Time” shows the apparent banality of a conventional pose and a special moment: that of a young couple lending themselves to the tradition of immortalising this “happy” day in their life. Wedding photography is a genre in its own right whose rigid stereotypes have long been governed by social and religious convention. Most of the time it is a hackneyed mixture of cheap, outdated formal or ceremonial costume worn for the role, conjuring up the splendid images of court or bourgeois painting, which has entered the collective consciousness as an obligatory and actually quite accessible part of the proceedings. Despite the clever strategies implemented to perfect this small masterpiece of hypocrisy, this moment of happiness is never really lighthearted and carefree. The dreams and very illusions of the protagonists are already under threat from the imminent storm. These storms of life that sweep everything away, starting with the reality of married life, so everyday and ordinary, beset by the economic and political context of the times in which we live. In the end, the clothing conventions of the institution of marriage are more evocative of this discrepancy between the highly orchestrated illusionary fantasy and the uncomfortable prospect of a future strewn with obstacles and difficulties, than of a happiness within hand’s reach. This fleeting moment captured by the photographer is of a different kind. It reveals another reality.
Yves Peltier