Nicole Miquel - Les Hotels Paris Rive Gauche like photography

FEBRUARY 2007 : NICOLE MIQUEL

Une journée particulière

An invitation to spend a night in a hotel and take a photo there, one photo that the place inspired me to take. I approached this as a sort of exile, and exile just eight metro stops from my house, alone, with no luggage at all. I wanted to empty my mind, forget myself. Once I had arrived at the hotel, a place of passing through, a one-night refuge where I was part of the scenery, I wanted to concentrate of the present, the now.

A sadness came over me. The light, the decor, the objects all caught my attention and I tried to transform them into something else that they were trying to show me. I looked hard into every detail, trying to mind the mystery and spirituality that are my obsessions as a photographer.

To look carefully and show something other than what is immediate, obvious. Forget the immediate to discover of possibilities of interpretation and show how light can change everyday things, transcend them and make us see things differently.

For 24 hours I was in this unknown place, a different part of town. I just took the time to wander with no real direction, and find a Greek restaurant to eat a kebab and drink some retsina.

Une journée particulière

For prints and prices, please contact the photographer

Nicole Miquel

Photographer
France

Email : nicole.miquel@wanadoo.fr
Web : http://improbablenikki.blogg.org

Biography

For a long time I have dreamt in black and white.
I came to photography as some come to religion.
In it, I found a way of expression, a form of art where other styles had seemed boring and discouraging.
It helped me with patience, detail, concentration, rigour, dedication.
To follow a project through to one's best ability, to finish every project started.
To accept difficulties, harshness, learning through searching. To express things through light and reveal my world, my thoughts.
I work with film, and my photos hope to be part of the classic 19th and 20th Century school of photography in which colour is variations of black and white.
I strive to only construct and make my images at the moment that they are taken.
I never reframe or treat them in any way, apart from the magic process of having them developed.
All my photos are about traces, imprints, memories. About looking carefully to see behind the mirror, beyond the wall.
I have some favourite themes, or rather some obsessive themes: reflections, raw material and explaining my mood through light.
My influences: Joseph Sudek, Brassaï, Man Ray, Henri Cartier Bresson, Diane Arbus, Robert Mappelthorpe, Joël Peter Witkin (and the list goes on).

Works

Tears in your eyes (Paris-New-York)
The wounds of the heart
Signs from the heavens
Icon Triptychs
Everyday spirituality
Countryside views
Décors
Urban traces (urine, grafitti, human traces)
Pigeon vultures
Out of focus lovers
A day with Andréï Tarkovski (photorama)
Various portraits

Exhibitions

"The wounds of the heart" - music by Robert Wyatt
Mai 2006: "A day with Andréï Tarkovski" – music by Purcell, Bach, with the Queer Factory collective, K-Lounge boat, Trocadéro, Paris
February 2006: Saint Valentine theme with the Queer Factory collective, l’Interface bar, rue Keller, Paris 11th arrondissement
October 2005: série "Out of focus lovers" at 72 heures, La Générale, rue du Général Lassale, Paris 19th arrondissement
April 2005: "Rough work" exhibition at the Blue Book bookshop, rue Quincampois, Paris 4th arrondissement
June 2001: "Tears in your eyes", at the Scandaleuses bar, Paris 4th arrondissement
April 2000: "Triptychs", rue de Sévigné gallery, Paris 4th arrondissement
May 1998: collective exhibition, rue Keller, Paris 11th arrondissement
May 1996: TERRA AMATA, "Tears in your eyes" and "The wounds of the heart", Passage du Retz, rue Charlot, Paris 3rd arrondissement.
Portrait exhibition at Friedrichhaffen
"Everything is possible", first exhibition at the St. Die cultural centre in the Vosges region of France

Professional experience

From 1981 to 1983: photographer for the Liberté de l’Est newspaper, in the Vosges region of France
From 1983 to 1985: photographic reporter for the "Viva Compagnie des Reporters" agency in Paris, and the Prisma agency, Madrid.
From 1985 to 1986: portrait project with the aid of the Friedrichhaffen cultural centre, Germany.
From 1987 to 1989: start of an artistic photo project directed by Jean-Claude Lemagny, curator of contemporary engravings at the Bibliothèque Nationale.
And since then, diverse eclectic projects against the flow and everything else.

Published work

7 photographs dans the book "Creation: where are the women" by Nathalie Epron, published by Terre d’éclat, 2004.
Illustration for the poster of "1962", a play by Mohamed Kacimi performed by the Aline César company.