Made in Fuping

Biographie

Born in 1964, Philippe Leroux taught himself about photography by shooting in studio. Later he founded the Aquatre collective. He won several prizes, including the FNAC/NIKON prize for his series “Ma tribu, Mon voisin, Mon monde”. He was Coup de Coeur at Azart Photo for his series “Réminiscence”, and Bourse du Talent Reportage for “Les mains bleues”. Presented twice at Les Boutographies, in 2009 and 2011, he has taken part in several other festivals such as Manifesto (Toulouse), Itinéraires des Photographes Voyageurs (Bordeaux) and the Festival International du Film Documentaire (Nyons).

Présentation

In October 2007, Philippe Leroux went to Fuping in China and photographed the FLICAM (Fule International Ceramic Art Museum) at the invitation of the Ateliers d'Art de France.

FLICAM's ambitious project, dedicated to international contemporary ceramics, is conceived around an industrial glass tile production site. It now houses delegations of ceramists from all over the world, who work in residence with local means and tools. The works produced are then presented in the museums of the invited countries. Philipe Leroux's images seem to carry a simple and calm legitimacy, that which would be given to them by the slow, ancestral and unchanged gestures that found the human community around its most elementary concerns. Building to protect oneself from the elements, shaping and cooking the earth to contain water and food, to store and ensure survival: these gestures carry the first aspirations of any human group. Photography, motionless and silent, seems here to join its object.