Photographer Éric Marynower is the Edge of Humanity Magazine contributor of this photo essay. To see Éric’s body of work, click on any photograph.

Moi tout seul

(Means both « me alone », and « by myself »)

I get bored, this is the starting point. I despair of ever being anything but myself. I am alone, I have blacked out the windows, opened the shutter curtains, I face the lens in the darkness, and I reveal, little by little, the different pieces of myself.

I manipulate the flashlight to play at distorting space-time and to play the character confronted with these tender distortions. It is a game I invented without being able to understand how it works, a game that forces me to deal with chance and reality, my two partners in this business.

The first rule of the game states that a photograph of “moi tout seul” must be taken in a single shot, without editing or retouching, using only the possibilities of long exposure photography. The second states that the only light source is a flashlight and that the light must be handled by hand.

The third states that I must do everything alone, with my two partners.

I don’t know many other rules.

The body becomes a brush and light a fleeting ink, I invite the imaginary into the real and try to catch the ephemeral, between appearance and evasion, a furtive thought that refuses to be caught.

Light is constantly moving, finding its way within the frame. I juggle with the light that tries to escape me, I twist its trajectory.

I repeat my gestures, refine my choreography, adjust my movements until I reach a kind of harmony. Chance being unpredictable and control being tedious, I must wait for a stroke of luck, and the image is born!

Long exposure photography allows me to distort reality, such as memory that alters, overlays, omits and reinvents. Like a memory that is reconstructed with each evocation, photography becomes a moving space where reality blurs and gives way to the marvelous. Going against the tide of generative artificial intelligence, I seek to create images with my hands, with my mind, with everything I am: body, mind, hair…

I move forward without knowing where I’m going, I observe myself, I get conscious of myself, I discover myself, and finally, I invent myself. An exciting multitude of possibilities reveals itself, dizzying, frightening and wonderful. I explore this unknown.

Being me fell on myself, it’s incomprehensible, almost unacceptable!

The result is photographs in the form of enigmas, of questions.

Biography

I was born on January 23, 1982, near Lyon, in France.

I am Éric Marynower; it just happened to me, and no one can explain it.

At two years old, I protested to my parents wanting to help me: "myself alone!". Adults laugh at this recurring expression, I insist, it’s not a joke!

I first considered different jobs, orange juice presser, golfer or engineer, but I finally became a lighting designer for the theater at twenty.

I make photomontages in parallel with this early career, I superimpose several images to try to photograph memory, with its associations of ideas, confusions, oversights, obsessions... I made it an exhibition in the spring of 2005 as part of the "Paris Jeune Talent" award.

But it’s the theater and the light that prevail, taking up all my time and space in my head.

I work with several artists, notably Émilie Le Roux, Tristan Dubois and Fleur Lemercier. I am passionate about light beyond the theater, from the sensitive aspect to the scientific aspect, from observation to creation.

It is only at the age of forty that I realize that photographing means writing with light, overexcited by my etymological discovery but having always been more sensitive to painting than to literature, I am interested in the technique of light-painting.

Unlike in theatre, you can do photography on your own, I take the opportunity to launch the project myself.

All images and text © Éric Marynower