A unique sense of présence

Berengere Parizeau has a profound feeling for Hindu spirituality, a quality one senses in her photographic work.  She has an eye for the physical detail of yoga practice, which is only apparent to a   serious practitioner.   Miraculously the camera records time in its flow, as it embraces the infinitely slow pace of the yogi’s meditation.  It is, in addition, as if the artist took the very picture of her own process of meditation.  Here photography is characterized by a strong sense of colour harmony, composition and something hard to capture: presence.

She is engaged in a complex project of investigation: anthropological, artistic political, each component helping  explain, illuminate the other… a dynamic knowledge of the planet, also served by having obtained master’s degrees in both art and political science. 

In her life ecology and anthropology are intertwined.  A striving to perceive wholeness and to act…  Knowledge aims at completeness, both rational, cognitive, yet including memory: tactile, emotional, memory of the heart.  The project is not only about grasping the world, but aims at achieving a state of identification with it.

Bérengère untethered the mobility of the body and the finesse of emotion through performance, a form of expression of contemporary art.  She turns temporarily into a shaman; thus she enters new presences, states of being.  Art becomes a form of knowledge. 

The artist has travelled widely and for long periods of time in China and India.  She has acquired a satisfactory knowledge of the Chinese language and is working on the great task of improving her knowledge of the Chinese, she speaks and writes.  « The character -or the pictogram – is an expression of Chinese thought.  It conveys complex information about the culture », Parizeau points out.

To know the geographical terrain, to practice yoga is part of a physical and mental preparation conducive to deeper understanding.  Art participates in this encompassing endeavour.

Energy is of the essence

In her Chinese Yunnan mountain village landscapes and portrait photos, one senses the vital breath qi…the pictures convey the wholesome sensation of being in the midst of all this oxygen, all this natural world  and its relation with the sky and the Cosmos.  People are integrated in nature, they are part of the whole. « I am greatly interested the powerful links the Naxi Dongba of Yunnan province entertain with nature », remarks Bérengère Parizeau.

In Parizeau’s photos, one senses one powerful quality: the genius loci – the spirit of place, as it may be sensed in regions of China and India.  

Numen is a Latin term for « divine presence », or « divine will. » Cicero writes of a « divine mind » (divina mens), a god « whose numen everything obeys ».

In contemporary usage, genius loci has come to refer to the   distinctive atmosphere of a location or a « spirit of the place » rather than to a guardian spirit. Thus, the genius loci is  less tied to a « divine power » (vis divina) which guides, pervades the lives of men. 

The urban and landscape images show profound empathy with the life and surroundings of India and they point to deep immersion in the culture.

For Bérengère Parizeau, the exercise of performance developed her familiarity with shamanistic practices, through immersion. 

Contemporary shamanistic practice opens up on a different space-time universe. (to wit, her work Montreal-Strasbourg 2003) « In performance, I reveal myself completely », explains the artist, « and free myself of the chains with which I tied myself.  My world is strange and marvellous, peopled by fantasmagoria and utopia.  I also explore trance.  Trance is a violent energy conduit which allows direct visceral contact.  What I share through performance is the expression of hope and love.  Communion, whether it is explored by courage or the magic of trance, is a powerful tool for healing. »  

Such artistic experiences of art forms which are contemporary, yet parallel immemorial practices, have allowed the artist to have a deeper understanding of the Naxi Dongba ethos and helped her develop the photographic temperament, the photographic eye.

The unity and concentration of the image signals the intensity of meditation.

The composition of the image is the fruit of intuition.  It is well-balanced and seems effected in effortlessness.  It is carried by ātman, inner breath and the breath of nature, in Hinduism. 

A PAINTERLY PHOTOGRAPHY

There is an ineffable zen quality in the image of the face of an old woman from the Drung valley, Yunnan, China.  The eyes open up on an internal world, another world.  There is respect, almost verging on reverence in the photographer’s gaze.   It is important to know that Bérengère lays great emphasis on the connection with her maternal grandmother, who had Haitian and possibly Taino roots.  The Tainos are the original population of the island of Hispaniola, at present occupied by Haiti and the Dominican Republic.  Here is an element in her lineage which possibly bears on her artistry.

Yogi in sacred yogic contemplation (description)

The yogi’s brown shanks are flanked by his upright arms adorned with wooden rings, all being of the same hue.  One senses great unwavering strength of spiritual origin. It is almost a trompe l’oeil.   The yogi’s body seems wrought of dark wood.  The photographer resorted to deep attention and concentration in securing such a scene. The sour cherry-coloured reddish carpet perfectly complements the body of the yogi.

Parizeau has a sense of shades and colour harmonies.

Manikarnika Ghat (description)

The sacred shores of the Ganges

Varanasi (Benares) Uttar Pradesh Northern India 2013

This photographic take expresses a sense of the sacred. Therefore language may not convey the atmosphere of this photo.  Here art does what it must do: the image is playing a specific role, which defies language.

In spite of the short time span of the snapshot, this view of the Ganges somehow looks to eternity.

Naxi Dongba Minority (description)

Yunnan 2012  South-West China

There are three middle-aged men sitting on low stools, their smiles are curiously satisfied.  To us the resplendent smiles are absolutely strange.  What are they satisfied with? They are satisfied with existence, which in their sense of being they know to be a great boon.   I am certain though, that their poor lives are full of trials.  Yet, their faces show happiness of an origin other than sensuality or materialism.  Bérengère seizes the Zen of the moment.  The smiles contain eternity.   The satisfaction is the opposite of reification:  they sense the divine quality in time, as it seeps into consciousness and their eyes reflect it.

One must emphasize her sense of chiarobscuro within images and colour harmony.   She is a master of gradations of colour shades: greys, earth colour shades, whites infused tints of dark brown, sepia, dark green

Cannabis Shaman (description)

In this photo, there is an accomplished colour gradation of pink, yellow-orange, earth colour, white, brown and black in the criss-crossed bands of the blanket. The photography is painterly.  

We may evoke a kind of sacred realism.

Parizeau shows virtuosity in geometric composition : the black, obscure, dark, jagged look diagonal geometric shape delineating the upper right corner of the image acts like a visual support, a benchmark against which the orange brown salwars, and the headgear of the of the shaman are outlined. 

The immensity of peace and silence. (description)

The graininess of the whitish-grey background highlights the interplay of the brown skin and the strong temperament showing in the Naxi Dongba man’s face.  The hands clasp each other in a powerful downward pointing movement.  The longish oversized hands seem to signal unusually great, very likely spiritual powers.

Let us draw a parallel with a significant representative of contemporary documentary photography, the Canadian Edward Burtynsky.   For example, he investigates shipbreaking yards in Bangladesh, hence also in a region belonging to the Indian subcontinent, or cultural sphere.  (Shipbreaking series, 2001) The laborious day routine and the hopelessness of the workers show through in his photography.  These are historical and social documents.  Yet, his work seems to me to be about here and now.   In most of his work he also studies matter with its presence, its materiality, heaviness.  And of course, intense chromatic study is part and parcel of his oeuvre.  While Burtynsky attests to the sociological, dynamic aspect of a world which is subject to globalizing forces, Bérengère Parizeau focuses on one less emphasized, more difficult to catch perhaps, but no less important aspect of reality: the spiritual life in a country which for millennia has sensed its crucial role, its complexity and in the end, its unity: India.    Bérangère Parizeau always has a spiritual angle, not encountered in Burtynsky’s work.

Her art also recalls the intricate images of 17^th century Dutch genre painting, domestic scenes with painstaking realistic detail.  One notes the mild quality of the light enveloping her individual and group portraits, and I cannot help but be reminded of Vermeer’s scenes.  It is not about identity, but association by recall.  « I like to work with natural light and prefer to show people in their everyday environment », says the artist.  Her preference for warm hues and chiarobscuro contrasts, also evokes the work of French baroque painter Georges de la Tour.  Such evocations underline the painterliness of her photography.

Parizeau also has developed series of smaller size geometric chromatic pattern images, which also display a strong self-confident taste in colour, picking up individual elements of her travel photography.  The interplay of patterns has rhythmic musical qualities. 

The artist develops a very personal spiritual realism with remarkable chromatic qualities and a sense of other dimensions of existence, which may be more felt than said.   The images capture slow time –or perhaps what may be termed an atemporal quality.  She is carving herself a space in photography, as both a sensitive documentary ethnological photographer and a portrayer of spirituality, as one who feels deeply and senses nuances.

Her artistic oeuvre points to what we are losing in the ongoing ecological crisis and in the advance of rampant transhumanism, the runaway proliferation of industrial and consumer technology:   the feeling for earth and Cosmos and how they interact with the psyche