“Sunday photographers” from the seaside offer an Off to Contact sheets

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A few years ago, the Planches Contact festival offered photographers participate in an Off. For several years, the artistic director of the festival, Laura Seraniet Delphine Barreformer director of communications for the city, wanted to do reborn this Off to allow other perspectives to be presented on the territory of Deauville (Calvados).

It is now done, at the You Hotel which is hosting this Off and four views on the territory : Delphine Barre, Jean-François of Love from the beach, Thomas Esnée et Delphine Malleray.

In “permanent residence”

If the Contact Sheets festival shows exhibitions of photographers who come for a few weeks “in temporary residences” in Normandiethese four “Off” photographers consider themselves to be “in permanent residence” by the sea.

In life, they work in communications, the hotel industry or in the world of start-ups, but as soon as they have free time, they leave, device slung over their shoulder or in their bag, to photograph their Deauville territory. These four Sunday photographers » weave a special link with this territory where they live, work or stay for a while, constructing a “long-term” photographic story, looking every day to see how the story continues.

Passionate about this “ surprise permanente” that the photo offers, Delphine Barre describes this attachment to this photography which takes its time: “for me, it's a very long process of knowing how to photograph a territory and I need that time, a very long time, to learn to look at buildings, angles, life.” What Jean-François, photographer behind the Instagram account, confirms Love from the Beach: “it’s an immersion, learning to feel, to absorb. And everything is so changeable here.” In particular the light of the beach which is at the heart of their collective exhibition.

Four views of the beach

Discovering the photos of these four photographers is treating yourself a dive into all the nuances of the Deauville seaside. Those of characters by Delphine Barrewho haunt the beaches of the Côte Fleurie, notably that of Deauville, which she has photographed for almost 20 years. “Beyond the places crossed and these fabulous settings, it is important for me to observe how we live near the sea in a space of freedom, nature and uncontrollable. An escapist world where we are otherwise, without constraint, freed from all obligations,” comments the photographer who spent long hours by the sea.

The characters that catch my eye are often alone, in dialogue with the sea, as if reassured by its presence. They abandon themselves to the ocean, rest, recover before leaving. I read the intimate in their movement or their immobility.

The nuances of the seaside are also “ graphic and clean linesthe tight framing and the play of light” captured by Jean-François, alias Love from the Beachwho took up photography during covid. Details and lights “which reveal the sometimes hidden beauty of what surrounds us, without artifice or staging», underlines the Deauvillais.

With the desire to “create visual escapes at the heart of the most ordinary moments», Thomas Esnée deploys in this exhibition hiscinematic universewhich he usually captures on the street. In this seaside series from Deauville, the young photographer “highlightsa cinematic atmosphere tinged with mystery».

Last photographer, last nuance: Delphine Malleray and her details. Whether it is a reflection, a shadow or an unusual vibration, she sees it as “the point of flight of beauty”. She says: “I felt the calm of the walkers on the beach, the carefreeness of the bathers, the fragility of the birds, the solitude of the fisherman on his boat… they didn't see me, but I did! At the moment we hold our breath and feel an almost childish joy at having caughtthe fleetingness of this moment».

Until January 5, at the Hôtel You, in Deauville.

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