Making a Moment: Les Diaphanes by Alban Van Wassenhove

In our article series, Making a Moment, we’re asking photographers to share one of their favorite photos that they’ve taken. We want to know the story behind the final image and everything that went into making it.

This time we spoke to Alban Van Wassenhove, AKA @Jouxy, a French photographer and videographer, working in the field of Performing Arts.

Alban lives an enviable creative life, and spends most of his time creating video installations on stage for contemporary dance shows, festivals, and electronic music artists. He also makes music videos and short films. Through these activities he has developed a growing interest in photography, in particular analogue photography.

He describes his photography as “sensitive” and “impressionist” - two words that certainly come to mind when viewing his exquisite photo series Les Diaphanes. Recently Alban has been most interested in multiple exposure as a method of creating environmental portraits where he uses setting, composition and light to inform and characterize his subjects.

Alban Van Wassenhove: I wanted to talk about this photo because it represents an important moment in my creative life.

For three years I have been very interested in double exposure on film, to the point that today I think I will only do that. I created a long-term series "Les diaphanes" which mixes natural textures with portraits. The principle is to shoot an entire film roll of textures, rewind it completely and then do a session of portraits on top of it.

This photo was taken during the filming of my clip - Winter. The video is largely inspired by my series “Les diaphanes.”

During the filming, which lasted three days, I asked the actors to pose one evening during an improvised session where I mixed their portraits with duckweed textures that I had previously photographed in the day and which served as the main setting for the filming of the clip. I had thrown stones into the duckweed pond to create a black shape that allows the subjects to be seen in the double exposure.

I used for this photo a Nikon FE2 mounted with the Voigtlander 40 mm f2. I also used a “Falcon Eye” led lamp to illuminate the subject.

The photo presented here is one of them with Marion Cadeau, the fantastic main actress. I really love the mix. It looks like the subject is looking through a window of vegetation.

To see more of Alban's photography follow his LomoHome and Instagram, and check out his website.

In this series of articles we're asking you to share the story behind your favorite photo. Interested in being featured? Email alex.gray@lomography.com with the subject line - Making a Moment.

written by alexgray on 2023-02-12 #people #making-a-moment #black-and-white #experimental #portrait #community #double-exposure #making-a-moment