ALEXIS DE VILAR
About the author, Alexis de Vilar
His perfectly composed images immerse us in a sweetness of life… Paradoxically, Alexis de Vilar, while removing himself from current fashions, produces contemporary photographs, with soul, a timeless soul! How can we not hear the music he clearly loves when he uses titles like « Asia song », « Swahili song », « African song » ?
He only portrays women as sublime, perfect. You see them but you don’t hear them. The children, the vahinés, the men that surround them live in the Paradise that these photographs offer us. He also shows a penchant for what are called primitive worlds. Tribes on the verge of disappearing or already vanished. Women, men, elders, children, wild animals … a wealth of icons!
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Alexis de Vilar is not documenting. He is proposing his vision of Paradise as sole resident, before transporting us there. The difficulty I find in giving Alexis’s photographs their full value lies in their distance from what our institutions so shamelessly value. These institutions are just as pleased to produce grandiose retrospectives of bygone photographers as they seem reluctant to show the essence of photography, it’s permanence in a timeless classicism.
…it is reassuring to find a photographer like Alexis de Vilar who makes us share his dream. This Paradise would be truly lost if his photographs weren’t the finest way to make it our heritage. When some have been searching for times past, Alexis de Vilar offers us his Paradise and secures it for times to come!
