Books by Jean-Christophe Ballot

Vanities, Funeral Rites in Toraja Country
ISBN 9782956068600
15 €

For the garden of the Auteuil greenhouses

Photographs by Jean-Christophe Ballot. Preface by Jean-Yves Tadié

Collection Hors série Alternatives, Gallimard. Publication date : 15-11-2015

TWO AUTHORS, TWO LOOKS that introduces the lively preface by Jean-Yves Tadié, a great specialist of Marcel Proust’s work. Words and images, at the service of a national heritage by definition common, the Jardin des Serres d’Auteuil. When Sophie Nauleau lets her talent as a storyteller express itself, the journey is sensitive. When Jean-Christophe Ballot paints more than he photographs this place, the discovery is renewed. Here is a talented bouquet, are they orchids or burning thistles, for you to discover when reading this book made for the continuation of the beautiful Jardin des Serres d’Auteuil.

Susse Foundry
The inventory & the place Photographs of the author. Preface by François Barré

Collection Hors série Alternatives Gallimard. Publication date : 05-03-2015
25 €

1758, the Susse brothers founded a business trading in office accessories, many of which were made of bronze. Gradually, the Susse brothers and their descendants turned to the casting and publishing of bronze objects, then sculptures.
In the 1950s, André Susse put the know-how of the foundry at the service of contemporary artists. In the workshop, we meet Miró, Giacometti, Germaine Richier, Max Ernst, Émile Gilioli…
Today, the Susse foundry maintains its know-how by putting it at the service of the successions of the greatest artists while getting closer to the young talents of today.

Jean-Christophe Ballot seizes the inanimate in space, sculpts images which tell us the history of the Susse Foundry. And the presences are such that our eyes blink at furtive, fleeting apparitions. These images fill with multiple flashes made of reminiscences this inventory until we find the soul of it, up to this place in which the noises even make echoes. We feel the warmth, the moods, the know-how from a tradition that everyone is eager to transmit. For it is indeed a question of transmission which, from a dreamlike inventory goes towards another place, and one agrees then that what is transported, moved, participates entirely, integrally of the humble respect offered to the work of art.

URBAN LANDSCAPES

From 1987 to 2006, over a period of twenty years, Jean-Christophe Ballot made images of cities all over the world: Paris, Rome, Berlin (two periods before and after the fall of the Wall), Burgos (in Spain), Bratislava, Zagreb, Ostrowiek (in Poland), Casablanca, New York, Chicago, Surabaya (in Indonesia), Singapore, Shanghai. He studied architecture, which is perhaps why he is so attracted to dealing with spaces in images and his ability to measure up to, and even confront, the monumental dimension of certain architectures. His look orders, builds, without ever being reductive, the complexity of space. He has been working for twenty years on the urban landscape, creating “portraits of cities” which are the subject of this work. He approaches the scenic and symbolic dimension of the public space and the urban tensions resulting from the meeting of the architectural masses. The urban landscape becomes a fantastic set, a theater where a performance is given every day. His images question the memory, they carry the history of the city, of the urban sedimentation. Something of the order of mutation and trace is at work in his work. In contrast to photojournalism, his work is in no way related to current events, but rather to the past and beyond in a “historicized distance”, according to his own expression. He works in camera and generally chooses the frontal approach to his subject. He thus favors forms, masses, lines and surfaces.

Photographs : Jean-Christophe Ballot
Texts : François Barré, Thierry Paqué
Collection Foto. 208 pages. 24,5 x 28 cm. 12/2007
35,50 €
ISBN 9782354280109

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