"It was after studying science that Olivier Pasquiers turned to photography, because he was looking for a human contact that he could not find in test tubes. "The camera makes you legitimate to ask go into a factory, a house, a workshop, explains the one who confesses to being a local talker. I am not a travel photographer, I like to take my images from a distance with a handshake. We sit down, we discuss, we make the images later. »

 

After individual practice, he joined the Floréal bar team in 1991. Neither really agency nor really collective, this association, which took the name of a café in the Belleville district, was founded in 1985 by photographers and graphic designers on questions of exchanges and use of the image. . The approach of the Floréal bar could be summed up as follows: people give us time, we give them an image that we bring to them, which will allow them to create another image, perhaps more difficult, which will force the person to give themselves up more. . As part of a humanist tradition, the Floréal bar has worked for associations such as the Secours Populaire or as part of urban renewal initiatives. Mandated by Anru, Olivier Pasquiers documented the demolition of the Renoir bar with André Lejarre, in the Cité des 4000 in La Courneuve. The work lasted nearly a year, the time necessary to be accepted by the inhabitants of the social park. “It was a really tough place, remembers Olivier Pasquiers. It took six months to meet people, build networks, meet associations. We photographed only part of the 350 dwellings, while trying to restore a representative corpus. »

The photographer is not fooled by the ambiguities of this highly institutional device: “We arrive mandated by the HLM office or by the City, in any case by the public authorities. Whether we like it or not, this context generates a balance of power and types of relations with the inhabitant which constitute our framework, with its constraints. Assigned to sensitive areas, Pasquiers sometimes dreamed of leaving the suburbs of the Republic to offer a more complete portrait of society. “I would like to photograph a city as a whole, with all its inhabitants, rich or poor, to show the diversity of its neighborhoods, but this is an order that has never been given to me. "Notice to amateurs and enlightened patrons!"

Olivier NAMIAS

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Born in 1960, Olivier Pasquiers has been a photographer since 1988. He has published several books combining texts and photographs. He works from a distance respectful of people and the situations they experience, affirming that photographing is a way of being among men and women, of looking at them, of listening to them, of waiting for them, of approaching them, of to greet, and to only have to try to translate this trust into fragments, into looks. “I am a photographer for the relationship with others, to exchange feelings, atmospheres, memories, books, …, photographs also with those I meet. ".

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Member of the late “Le bar Floréal.photographie” between 1991 and 2015, date of the disappearance of the collective. He is now installed in his own workshop, the PERMANENT CHANTIER in Bois Colombes (92)

 

He often works in collaboration with writers, storytellers, other photographers, graphic designers or humanitarian associations. His work has been the subject of numerous personal or collective exhibitions.