CONSTANTIN SCHLACHTER

Constantin Schlachter is a poet connected to the Earth and to Mankind, who knows how to capture magical moments. In a timeless aesthetic, we are surrounded by mystical sensations of religious beauty where bodies and objects seem to be there for eternity. This work is the result of complex thinking and diverse inspirations – from literature, to painting and film – leading all the elements to form a unit and each photo a piece of art.

How did you come to photography?

I studied literature and cinema for two years, then I realized I was more into the photography of cinema. I tried to apply to some cinema schools, but all the exams were closed. Then I discovered a photography school (Gobelins, l'école de l'image) which proposes some video courses amongst the different photography courses. To sum up I was introduced to photography by the will to do cinema. Moreover, this school permitted me to experiment a lot on photography and to discover a way to express myself.

The faculty of photography to catch happenstance interests me. You can set and think you control everything, still there always will be the chance for the unexpected to appear and to create something beyond. The medium also imposes on you a certain patience due to the time you have to wait between the click and the final result (processing, post-production). I like this ambivalence between the rapidity of the act of taking the photo and the time it takes to develop it. It creates some space for me to think about what I did and what I expect.

Lastly, I'm interested in the ambiguity that photography generates sometimes to the viewer, especially with the last techniques of retouch. This medium always questions realism and allows me to play with perception.

You seem to be mystically connected to the planet, to matter. What is your relationship with nature?

The evolution of my thoughts is strongly linked to my childhood and to the break that happened when I moved to Paris. On one hand, I had the chance to grow up in a small town by the forests and the mountains, a place favorable to tales and mysteries. Furthermore, my childhood was fed by mythologies, religious class, curiosity and boredom, a nice melting pot of imagination. And I think this fertile ground stimulated my relation to the world, and questioned it very early. On the other hand, my literature and cinema studies structured and completed my imaginative thoughts. And my photography's experiments gave them a shape, a materiality.

Also, those contrasts between Paris and a country town gave me the wish to return close to nature and the step back to apprehend it. I feel a deep link to the matter and the planet, but I am not sure that this link has to be called “mystical”. We all have those links in ourselves. It might be hidden, even lost sometimes and so mysterious to ourselves. That is the reason why we call it “mystical”, but for me those links have more to be seen as natural.

You create a more spiritual and poetic reality. How do you photograph the invisible?

I'm producing a stream of pictures continuously. It evolves following my feelings, readings and inspirations. I don't like to struggle into a project, because it limits me. It constrains me into the first idea I had, and it's hard after to drift from it. So I consider my work more like a diary that I get to organize afterwards into narrations, than like a project.

Also I think that each image possesses its own potential of significations. You can't constrain the picture to have specific or limited significations. In other words, it's like lying to yourself. I'm only dedicated to the pictures, I let them speak to and for me. We can call “invisible” these secret parts contained in the picture.

Moreover, it depends on the context, the invisible can manifest itself in many different ways. It might be latent in the world that surrounds us, and sometimes in ourselves. It can appear suddenly, like a glimpse, or linger deeply, waiting to be revealed.

I can distinguish three moments during which the invisible may show up. Firstly, the intuition of the moment can guide you throughout the shooting. Secondly, all the editing reveals the potential of pictures by their confrontations and dialogs between each other. Thirdly, the post-production helps to push the pictures to their limit. It allows me to separate the essence of the image from the disturbing information that blurs its readability. I use several manipulations, such as crop, color transfer, or negative for example.

By means of these techniques and their combinations I can get closer to the invisible parts of the picture and bring them to light. Finally, the most important thing is to let time allow the invisible to manifest itself.

For the book "Trajectoire du gyrovague", you went for a walk, alone. What did you find during this period of introspection?

It is hard to express precisely with words what I experienced, and I think my pictures translate it better, even if it is partially. This itinerant state is on the verge of the meditative one. You feel closer to your surroundings and also to yourself. While you let your instincts and imagination wander, your senses are more attentive. And you start to project yourself on the landscape. Shapes appear slowly in it. It is not a vision of something else, but simply the revelation of the elements such as they are.

Tell us about adapting your style to the world of fashion.

After my photography school, I worked for Paolo Roversi for a year. At the beginning, I was not really into the fashion world, regarding it from a commercial angle. I was more focused on my personal projects and especially “La Trajectoire du gyrovague”. But in Paolo's work, I saw strong links between the art and fashion worlds. Indeed, through several tricks and experimentations he raises fashion stories to pieces of art, creating atemporal pictures. This meeting opened me to the fashion world.

It is a faster world than the one I am used to working in. Indeed, to develop my personal project I let myself the time to fail and experiment until I am satisfied, which is less possible while shooting an editorial. This aspect in fashion was a bit challenging at first, but quickly I found a way to have satisfying pictures.

Usually, I prepare each shooting well in advance, by means of moodboards, talks with the team and the magazine. By those different inputs, I set a frame where all the team can improvise during the shooting. Also, there is still an important part of narration in my fashion stories that helps me to structure the editorial.

The real difference with my personal work is the part left to the team that works with me: stylist, model, hair and make-up artists, set designer, assistants. It is really a team effort that should allow everybody’s opinions. My role is to clarify those inputs, in order to avoid contrary deviations and to keep the relevant ones. It allows the stories to open to new horizons and to have the best of everybody. If the work is too controlled, it loses the freshness of the moment, and can even become sterilized.

Finally, I took the fashion world as a playground where I can experiment with new ways to photograph.

What are your plans for the future?

I will continue to photograph and to explore new media, especially video and sound.