A book bringing together abstract photographs and poetic fragments by artist and photographer Valentin Fougeray. Fougeray’s practice involves using colour as a vocabulary and prioritizes evocation over description. Through soft colour blurs Fougeray attempts to grasp what is fading, capturing its sensitive echo. In doing so, he seeks to establish emotional resonance and evoking memories sometimes long buried. For Fougeray, photography is a poetic, sculptural, and sensorial space. The absence of a stable subject leaves room for a free and intimate appropriation. De l’amour à la mort is Fougeray’s first book. It is intended to take the reader through the different stages of a love cycle. However, from the very first page, Fougeray makes it clear that this is “neither a handbook nor a truth” but, rather, “a path of emotions”:

“We turn the pages as we move through a love story: the dazzling encounter, intimacy, the first crack, separation, loss, then the emergence of a new form of self. The images do not try to illustrate; they embody inner states, give shape to emotions. Color, light, and diffuse textures become the language of desire, love, fear, lack, gentleness, collapse…”

De l’amour à la mort comes out tomorrow, November 14th. It will be presented at a public launch in Paris (Galerie Mmatters, 2 rue Commines, 75003 Paris 4:30–8:30 pm).