Par
Christophe Jacquet
Published on
May 4, 2025 at 9:30 am
In good photographer, François Decaëns love light at Caen (Calvados). He loves to play with her, her reflections, his contrasts. But out of the question for him to enter it, to draw the blanket.
He prefers photographers “who hide behind their device”
With his illustrious peers, this official image sensor for the former Lower Normandy region and For the city of Caen Prefers “these very modest people, who hide behind their device”. Like Willy Ronis – “a delicious man”, Édouard Boubat or Robert Doisneau.
At the level of Caen, where he was born in 1965where he has almost always lived, François Decaëns is of this sensitivity. That he expresses a little in his institutional work, when the covered events and the locked communication of elected officials allow him. And much more on a daily basis, in these photos taken by “walking in the streets” of Caen, the nose and the blue eyes raised towards the sky.
Photography? “It was easier”
So far, he had kept them for him, somewhere. “I have no pictures of myself hanging home. »» He waited to be 60 years old pour in publish some in An “intimate” book, Caen. Viewsedited in 4,000 copies by the publica bookstore, rue Saint-Jean.
Caen, his city, in pictures on images
The first personal book of photographer François Decaëns comes from a question, which takes off his publisher, the bookseller Christophe Scelles. “Why has no one has used their photos from Caen so far? These are not images that we are used to seeing.”
The buyer and manager of the religious bookstore Publica, rue Saint-Jean in Caen, “has confidence”. He had 4,000 copies of the second work printed, only published by him. In the middle of a millennium, “we wanted to do something other than yet another history book on Caen”.
In a hundred pages, the book Caen. Intrique views of the exclusive photos of François Decaëns and short texts of twenty personalities born or passed by Caen. Like journalist and producer Laure Adler, and her memory of “La Rue du Gaillon”, “where my grandmother will welcome me […] The street where I will learn everything “, the writer and criticism Jean-Louis Ezine, and his lyric evocation of the meadow, Alain Genestar, the former boss of the JDD and Paris-Match, who remembers his birth” in an American Blea Bleu Sky “, Swedish houses,” of the ivy hills covering the rubble “, etc.
In view, François Decaëns dialogues with a little players shots, which he took in the case or on the phone, “seven or eight years ago” or “up to two days” before the closure of the work. There are panoramas of Caen to all seasons, views of churches, details of the university, terraces, concerts, seized on the spot or very compound. “I chose the photos that remained in mind, which are in intimate relationship with the places I live,” says François Decaëns. “I left the imperfections, the violent counters [comme en couverture du livre]. Often, I see more forms than the subject. “
They are revealed by the layout of Anne Sablery. The graphic designer, according to Christophe Scelles, “found correspondence between photos, forms of shapes and colors”, of which François Decaëns is not always aware. We find in his book his favorite style figures. “I love the mirror effects. It’s another way of seeing Caen, it’s like another city that is reflected.”
A book full of “winks”, where his children “several times” appear. But he never. No selfie, no self -portrait. Only his gaze, sometimes unexpected, on the scene, the people he meets, the decisive moments or not, is reflected in it.
At the Louvre or on excavation sites in Caen
How did he forge him, this look, he who “wanted to be a painter” and adopted photography because “it was easier”? For François Decaëns, it may have started with his father, Joseph, a great medieval archaeologist at the castle, died in 2016, after being 16 years mayor of Louvigny. “He brought me to the Louvre, in Paris, Sunday morning. We were going to see two paintings, no more, and he explained to me. »»
-He also dragged him on excavation sites. Discreet, François Decaëns confides in counted words. A revelation came to him a few hours after our interview, by SMS.
I think I learned to look at the colors on the successive strata of archaeological sites. Colors in time, which intertwine.
These colors, he played for the first time after the college of history at the University of Caen, “in a photo studio on the port, which was only advertising”.
Afterwards, he entered the Regional Directorate of Cultural Affairs (DRAC), Inventory of heritage“To avoid the army”. “I only had to do two years at the time, I stayed there for 14 years. This is where he meets Pascal Corbières. “He taught me the rigor, he taught me the technique, to do without it. “For two, they travel” all the Lower Normandy “. “We discovered these paintings in churches,” recalls the fervent amateur of the painter Jacques Deschamps, whose house he bought.
Away for a year
Subsequently, he went to the communications department of the old region. “It’s not the same job. We are no longer in contact with people. »Before Philippe Durona “friend” of his father, and mayor of Caen from 2008 to 2014, attracts it to the city of Caen. He has worked there since, “seriously, without taking himself seriously”.
Until last year, and this respiratory disease which holds it on a long -lasting stop. A little cut off from the world, away from municipal affairs, but not his constant passions for drawing, for books.
While training in binding, François Decaëns is, in “big reader”, to the jury of the city’s literary prize, of which he prepares an exhibition, for his half-century of existence, in 2026.
Practical. François Decaëns, Caen. ViewsPublica editions, 114 pages, € 20. Available on order on the site www.librairie-publica.fr
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