Could you explain what Who’s that nude in the living room ? is?

Who’s that nude in the living room ? is an art project that I started several years ago where I photograph different individuals in the simplest cloth, naked, to try to show their uniqueness and at the same time diversity. Today I have photographed more than 2000 people in different collections. Aesthetic photos, without vulgarity, without pornography, and which I try to do as authentic as possible towards every individual. 

What did you try to express through these photographic works?

When I started the project, it revolved around three main ideas. The first was the place of aesthetics: I wanted to show individuals, beings, bodies, younger, older, skinnier, curvier, different in any case from what the fashion and advertising industry accustoms us to see on a daily basis. To show the bodies that we don’t necessarily see in magazines, on advertising posters, and to show that by their differences, by their uniqueness, they can be beautiful differently, elseways than with perfect measurements. They can be beautiful by a look, by a smile, by an attitude, by an expression. To show that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and not in dictates of measurements. 

The second point I wanted to work on was the place of modesty. Ten years ago, we were in a society which, even then, was already moving towards two extremes: on the one hand, more and more omnipresent, unsolicited pornography, whether in the newspapers or on the Internet; and on the other hand, a revival of Puritanism, where the body is demonized, frowned upon, excluded from social networks, whereas it was always present in the art history. Between these two extremes, I wanted to show healthy nudity, without eroticism, more natural nudity, the one with which in general one is born and remains the entire life, nudity that doesn’t shock, just the one that describes the body. I thought this was the case ten years ago, I think it is even more so today with the revival of Puritanism very present. So I wanted to propose to everyone to come, to dare, to defy a little bit the codes, the taboos, and to dare to assume, to expose their bodies in the simplest of ways. 

The third point was a reflection on attraction, on what we like in a being when we take it out of any socio-cultural context. When I was a teenager, we had a lot of posters of music bands, models, actors, and we identified with them. The other type of photo we often have at home is family photography. In both of these cases, you have a very figurative photo, which describes someone as you know them. Here, I wanted to take the opposite approach: I wanted us to be able to dream, to imagine a being without any information about him or her. We have neither his name, nor his profession, nor his environment, nor his age, nor his clothes, which position us socially, they are never neutral. The idea was really to push the absence of information to the maximum, to let the spectator, the collector of the photograph, dream, imagine who could be this person. 

Through the project, we can see many totally different universes. Can you tell us more about it? 

Over the years I wanted to continue the project but to make it evolve graphically, aesthetically, to add meaning to each collection. Year after year, you have different collections, with a different graphic style, with different images, which take up the same ideas, the same concept: an individual where only one photograph is chosen, no casting, no retouching, but which let me set up different backgrounds and universes. 

Each universe must allow me to express myself as an artist, to add a reflection on today’s society, and also not to make the same print, the same light, the same photograph for ten years, and to be able to change and to offer something else to collectors. 

To have the idea is one thing. To undertake is another. Can you tell us about your first session? 

The first session was a bit by chance, I was very young, I had just finished my studies, I was just starting out in active life, I didn’t have a photo studio yet. I remember looking for a place where I could photograph the first people, and we ended up in the living room of a friend’s parents, while they didn’t know about it, and were on a weekend. We were able to take the first photographs there. The first models were the people who trusted me, friends, friends of friends, who came by word of mouth, when I didn’t have much to show (I had just come out of school), and who trusted me, who dared to stand naked in front of my camera, that’s when I did the first photographs. Then, quickly they pleased, I was lucky to have more and more people who wanted to come and pose. 

Today, how do you find your models?

Today it’s rather the people who come to find me via the website, they hear about us via exhibitions, via word of mouth, via social networks. The idea is that they register directly on the website, they choose their time window when they want to come and I know nothing more about them. When we open the door, that’s when we discover them, their name, their age, their profession, their history, the reasons that push them to come, which allows me to ensure that each session is unique, different, and where I try to make the photograph that will correspond to everyone. 

Where does the title Who’s that nude in the living room ? come from? 

The title Who’s that nude in the living room ?  was for me the purpose of the project: to acquire a work of art of a person we don’t know, of an anonymous person, and to exhibit it in our living room. I have often been asked “Why in the living room?”. Because when I started the project, I was a student in Paris and like most students in Paris, we live in a studio that is a living room, bedroom, kitchen, bathroom, toilet, because of the rent prices, and because we didn’t have other rooms. In my mind, it was the living room THE room overall. Today you can put the artwork in the room you want, or even put several in each room. 

Have you also posed?

The idea of the project is that it’s anonymous, so maybe, maybe not. Take a look on the website, you’ll see if you recognize me or not. 

And your relatives?

Some of them decided to come from the beginning, others took much longer.  It is very interesting in this case, because it is always more complicated when you know the person, but I was always flattered that they dare to come and give themselves up to me, to overcome their modesty, their complexes. It’s something that varies a lot depending on the individual: there are people who have taken a long time to dare to do it, others who have always been willing to do it. There are really no rules about it. 

Where have your photographs been exhibited?

We were lucky to have different exhibitions, in Paris of course, where the project was born, but also in the United States, in New York, in Miami. We were exhibited in Osaka, in many places, in galleries, in public spaces. It was always great moments because for me the purpose of an art project is to make exhibitions, that’s what I find beautiful. 

I think I have a rather moving memory of an exhibition in Arles, for the Carrières de Lumière, where I had the chance to see my photographs projected in large scale onto the old stone quarries six meters high. Yet these were photographs I knew, but I was lucky to rediscover them, to see them differently. Just thinking about them again, I am still breathless. 

Among all these photos, do you have any preferences? 

It’s hard to say, because I’ve photographed more than 2000 people. There are many that I particularly like. I like them both for the aesthetics, for the graphics, but also sometimes for stories of models, but I’m the only one who knows, I don’t reveal them. 

I like to refer not to the ones I like, but to the ones that were really loved by my peers. I have quite a few photographs that have been lucky enough to be selected in contests, that have won awards, that have been recognized. The fact that it’s not me who loves them, but the professional jury, touches me particularly and I love them all the more. 

 Are you still working on this project?

We continue to photograph in the studio today, even though I’m working on other artistic projects. There are regularly open slots for the sessions, and the project continues, not only on the production of the works, but also on the exhibitions, which we will continue to exhibit in different places, as soon as possible. 

What advice do you give to people who discover the project? 

If you are discovering the project today, I would advise you to take the time. In our society where everything goes fast, where we try to look at everything quickly, it’s difficult to look at ten years of work in a few minutes. I would say to go and take the time to look at each photograph carefully, to take five, ten, fifteen seconds per photo. Take the time to look at the details of a curve, a smile, a look, to let yourself go. Go to the next one, take the time, go back to the previous one.

Often I think, but it’s true overall, not just for my photos, we don’t take enough time to look at a work of art, to immerse ourselves in it, in the atmosphere, in the universe and let ourselves be touched. 

Hello, I am Idan Wizen, a fine art photographer in Paris. I have created a collection called Hinders which I will talk about in this video.

What is Hinders? Can you explain the choice of this title?

Hinders is a collection that speaks above all of freedom. Hinders means in English “the fetters“. We chose this title because we wanted to talk about the chains, often invisible, that prevent us from being free, from emancipating and fulfilling ourselves. These are often chains that we will impose on ourselves, without necessarily realizing it. I wanted through twenty frescoes to highlight them, to underline them and to show how each one could try to free himself from them with, already as the first step, the awareness of these chains. 

In a world where we always blame society, you decide to put the blame on ourselves. Why?

We are in a society where it is very easy to be a victim. We’ll say that it’s because of society, because of the context, because of a lot of things we can’t do, that we’re not free, that we’re limited. I don’t really believe in that, I think that we are in a relatively free society, we have rarely been so free: we are free to travel, we are free to do what we want, we are free to be whoever we want to be, with a few limits. And fortunately, this is normal. Most of the obstacles, in general, come from ourselves: from the fear of the others’ look, of what people will say, of what we think we are not able to do. Often, we are our own jailer. We are the ones who limit ourselves, we often find pretexts, say that it is because of others, but when we look deeply, we know that we can do it, that we have the possibility to do it. 

What I wanted with this collection is to speak to the viewer and tell him that he is capable of going beyond his fears, his limits, his chains and that he is capable of breaking them. 

What is the main subject of these photographs? Freedom? 

All these photographs speak about freedom, individual freedom, but there is not only one freedom, there are several. Freedom in the broadest sense is a very beautiful concept, but when we put it into practice in our society, we have a lot of freedoms, which are often opposed to each other. 

I wanted to underline the different freedoms: freedom in relation to work, freedom in terms of one’s image and self-esteem, freedom regarding the consumer society, freedom concerning the IT field, science, freedom regarding religion. We will talk about all these different freedoms, about how we will react. 

Often, nobody will put chains on all these freedoms, we will put them on certain fields, and each one according to its past, its lived, its education, will have hindrances, chains which are different and which are clean to him. 

Where were the photographs taken? 

There are several photographs, there are several scenes and some were made in my studio in Paris. For the others, we tried to work outside to mix natural and artificial light and to create a different universe – the one you will see on the great majority of the photos of the collection, where we are in the middle of the fields. For this, we found a place near Fontainebleau, in the suburbs of Paris, which we liked because of the great luminosity, the structure and the nature of the landscape and the fields, which were perfectly suited to the dreamlike world we wanted to create.

Why this setting? 

Why work in the fields outside? It allowed me to give an impression of infinity, of grandeur. In the studio, we are much more limited in space. I wanted to talk about the pressure of the world that could weigh on each person, in its infinity, in its grandeur, to what extent each individual is very small. 

Why in fields? Because we wanted it to be very timeless, very universal. Basically, there are fields everywhere in the world, even if crops often change, everywhere on earth there are fields. And there have been fields at any time, in any case for a very long time, and there will certainly be fields in the future. So that was the advantage of having this setting, to speak of universality, timelessness and to be able to speak in a generic way about humanity, and not necessarily about our current society.

What do the models represent?

The models for me represent everyone and nobody at the same time. They are in my universe, in my imagination, close to the hero or, in any case, to the imperfect hero, the one who is at the beginning of his quest, who is searching for himself, who is developing, who is going to face different dangers. 

They are, for me, in the image of the novel or of classical literature, this hero as one could describe him in illustration. They represent everybody and nobody. They are neutral, and at the same time, we can identify with them very easily. 

Some elements were made in post-production. Why this choice? 

We often associate photography with just a reportage image, something that is taken on the spot and that must transcribe reality. For me, not at all. It’s a way of drawing, a bit like movies today where we create an imaginary world thanks to 3D, thanks to special effects, thanks to incorporation. This is what I wanted to do for this collection. I wanted to talk about what I had in mind, about my imagination, about scenes that were not necessarily directly realizable at the shooting, at least not with the means we had. It was difficult to find quadruplets to create certain photographs, it was difficult to find a giant bolt of 12 m high and even less to transport it. A lot of things were not feasible to shoot, so we decided to make it post-production, to edit when it was necessary when we had no choice. For me, the idea is to bring a sense, an image and to create perhaps a small dose of surrealism and dreamlike.

Can you tell us more about the prints in this collection? 

All the prints were made on Hahnemühle Bamboo paper, I won’t go into more detail on that, it’s a very textured paper, very beautiful and deserves to be seen in an exhibition. We have formats that go from 40 x 60 cm to the largest print that is 1m x 1m50, which is a unique piece. In all, there are 15 copies of each photograph in four different sizes. 

The drowning of consumption, shoes sauce

This is a photograph that was taken in a studio where we took the model and put her in the middle of a pile of shoes that I had collected around me. A rather direct shot, but it was quite long to arrange the shoes and to put them in place. 

It’s a photograph that obviously talks about overconsumption, mainly compulsive consumption in which we can drown. It is for me something dangerous, in which we can lock ourselves, by our society which will push us to appear. But it’s up to everyone to be stronger than that, to get out of it and to consume, of course, but with intelligence and moderation.

Run worker, run

As far as the title is concerned, it was a little bit of a reference to the movie Forrest Gump with Tom Hanks that I think everybody knows (at least I hope so, otherwise I invite you to see it as soon as possible!).

Parenthesis aside, this is a photograph that we took in the fields. Of course, the bolt was not there, it was added in post-production. But apart from that, everything is real: the sky, the movement of the hair, all the intensity, it’s as if we were there.

It clearly makes a reference to the enclosure that one can have in his work, creating the link between the worker and sometimes the hamster that runs in his cage.

How can we get out of this when we are unhappy in our work when we do not fulfill ourselves in it, that we can get out of it, in spite of the necessity to work and the absence, sometimes, of a solution.

It is a whole reflection on this freedom: one is always free to resign, to leave one’s job. Are we really? In reality, it’s always more complex than the beautiful words that tell us that we are free to do what we want.

Just break it!

Just break it! is a photograph that was made, obviously, in post-production, where we see the female character of Hinders four times, where she is fighting with her own image. This image is represented by these big mirrors that are above her as if it were herself in a different dimension.

Why? Because we can see that when you ask people, their own image is much more different than the one that others perceive. It is always difficult to perceive ourselves, to look at ourselves as we are, as much on the physical aspect as on the level of our life in general, and on what we are, on what we have done, on what we have achieved. This difference of perception is fundamental, because as a rule it will guide us towards choices and often towards wrong choices. 

The idea of this photo is to tell each individual to be able to detach himself from this image, from this look that we have on ourselves which is distorting, which is biased and to be able to free ourselves from it, by breaking the mirrors that lock us in. 

What is your feeling now that you see this project realized? 

These are photographs that I am very proud of, that I appreciate very much and that I hope will find an audience that will appreciate them as much as I do.

It wasn’t always very simple, we had a lot of unforeseen problems, whether it was shooting in the studio or on location, even when we realized in post-production that we had certain ideas, we thought that everything would work perfectly, and then we realized that it was much more complicated, that it took more hours than expected. We put six months of delay compared to the initial planning on the post-production. 

It’s a project that I’m proud of, that I’m happy with, and that I will be proud to present in future exhibitions. 

Will there be a follow-up to this collection?

No, there will be no follow-up. When I create a project I like it to have a beginning, a middle and an end. For me, the story about individual freedom has been told as it is and it suits me well. On the other hand, I have other work in progress on other projects, other photos that are closer to the fresco, perhaps even more elaborate, more complex, which are still in the writing phase, which will soon be in production. 

I can already give you a little title: it will be called We Tomorrow.