Quotations from different documentary films 1.
About forty eminent and renown intellectuals,academics and artists of the whole world have analyzed and studied San Damon’s works.Titles of the documentary films on the internet : San Damon S.O.I. (1ère et seconde partie),…San Damon,Oniroscopisme,…..San Damon L.O.A.C,….Si j’étais une oeuvre d’art de San Damon,…..San Damon Onirscopisme dans la ville.Links on this site in “blog et films”.
Jean-Paul Dessy (Conductor)
“ Talking about a photographic work of a landscape “
1.) What is on work here proceeds from the alchemical Magnum Opus,that’s to say from the transmutation of the matter of the reality,of the materiality.And San Damon’s work, in this case the transfiguration of a landscape,operates by metabolizing the colours.And this chromatic mutation suggests to us a rereading of the space.
2.) There’s the creation of a meditative and contemplative eye and it allows a new relation with the reality,through the work,through San Damon’s eye.He’s got a new way of watching, that of the watching subject in relation to the watching object and what brings them together is the way of watching.It’s the silence of the watching.(…) This way of watching informs us and at that moment begins that sacred movement of art,which can save the world as Dostoïevski said,we are in the sacred.
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Jean-Marc Sparenberg (Doctor in Applied Physics,Civil Engineer)
1.) I think that the first remarkable aspect of San Damon’s photos is the quality of his black colours,which are of a totally extraordinary depth.And so these black colours are of course very,very beautiful from a photographic point of view,and for a physicist,what I am,they really make think of the cosmos,of the intergalactic emptiness.So it gives the photos a slightly shifted,a slightly worrying character.
Nevertheless it also brings a more universal connotation.
« Talking about a large photographic work of tram in the urban space »
2.) (…) a very mechanic,very Cartesian vision of the physics based on this notion of absolute determinism is very well evoked on many photos by San Damon and is illustrated by the frequent theme of the rail and trams.These rails contain this notion of determinism and of great constraint concerning the movement.So,in particular,there’s this photo of this series evoking Paul Delvaux with these two rails joining almost to infinity.
3.) From the moment on that this world is determinist,we can ask the question of the existence itself of time.And there’s where San Damon’s photos are a particular echo of this problematic,because a photo is essentially a motionless object,in which time doesn’t pass,by construction.And hence what is very interesting is,of course,that he achieves in producing an impression of time passing by,of movement,with an object in which time doesn’t pass.
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Jean-Louis Migeot (President of the Academy of Science,of Humanities and of Fine Arts of Belgium,Acoustician)
1.) So it might be the moment to talk about the Oniroscopism,since this work is called Oniroscopism.I think that there’s really in this photographic work made by San Damon,a well chosen name,since there’s clearly a problematic of the watching,of the vision which is related to the word “skopein”,in Greek “to look,to see”.There’s a particular artist’s eye.There’s a look each of us can have at these photos.And of course;because of the rendering;because of San Damon’s personal intention in the choice of the subject. But also in the slighty phantasmagoric distance which the chromatic modification imposes,there’s a dreamlike dimension which is evident.And so Oniroscopism,it’s something that imposes itself in an obvious way.
2.) (…) it has to be said that the notion of chromatism is used in music as in the acoustics,we are in front,if you want,of something which is in the line of the transposition in music.We take a photo,the colours which are present are represented by a certain number of frequencies,of wave lengths.San Damon here transforms them,
modifies them,we recognize the kind of difference that can exist between a concer - - to in F major and one in B flat.
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Tomas Bern (Philosopher U.L.B)
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Patrick de Neuter (Psychoanalyst,Co-founder of the analytical space of Paris)
“ talking about photographic works on the forest theme”
1.) The photos that San Damon has suggested to my reflection made come up in me a stunning series of memories in me.
2.) (…) There’s in San Damon the will to go beyond,of course,the simple photo.The will to create newness,the will to recreate the reality,perhaps even or almost certainly,to transform it into reality of dreams.
3.) (...) the colours that San Damon injects and which come to melt,to interfere with the natural colours.Then the movement he transmits,the photographic camera to which he imparts this movement.
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Nicolas Cauwe (Curator of the Art and History Museum of the Cinquantenaire,
Oceania)
1.) This photo by San Damon inspires me particularly because we vaguely guess the background behind the characters and the whole seams in a steam,if I can say so,in any case drowned in an abstraction of the foreground (…).I work on all the prehistoric periods,that’s to say on the societies of the past which didn’t know the writing yet, which didn’t leave any testimony,even not an indirect one of their own way of thinking.
2.) On this photo by San Damon we have to look a bit for this mankind,we don’t get closer immediately but we can try to see if there’s not another world than ours which could be behind,and that’s what is interesting.
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Pierre Chomé (Criminal Law Lawyer)
1.) I fell in love with paving stones.It’s San Damon’s work that I appreciated a lot not simply because of the light and the original aspect of the photo,but because for me it evoked memories of a missed youth.
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Olivier Lermen (Neurosurgeon)
1.) Very concretely,the colours of San Damon’s Oniroscopism make us think of histologic images,for example there’s the photo which shows bushes and tree trunks in the winter that could correspond to neuronal cells.
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Thierry Desmedt (Professor of Communication at the Catholic University of Louvain)
1.) In this image by San Damon I found something that rather well corresponds to the idea I had of our memories.
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Antoine Masson (Psychiatre et Criminologue )« talking about photographic
works of the forest »
2.) San Damon’s photos representing the spring and the summer are real condensations, with their red magenta colour,the ochre which begins to burn.A sort of incandescence,a sort of inner violence,a sort of burning,of fire which can only make us think of the sentence retaken by Freud : “Father,don’t you see that I’m burning ?”
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Patrick de Neuter (Psychoanalyst,Co-founder of the analytical space of Paris)
" talking about a musical work composed by San Damon ”
4.) The musical accompaniment constitutes a supplementary creation strategy of these photos,an injection of life,of passion and of urge.Besides it’s absolutely remarkable that the 3rd suite by Bach is also,like the photos are,transformed in its turn.After some classic moments San Damon shakes it up,
then tears it with different human cries,
with certain noises imported from life. And finally this suite by Bach is transformed into a totally caustic jazz score which for me very well evokes the desire,the passion and the urge.
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Philippe de Schoutheete (Ambassador and Diplomat)
“ Talking about a photographic work of a forest”
1.) I always liked the underwood and I was very impressed by a photo by San Damon which shows an underwood in rather unreal colours,where there are blue colours and a black sky,on this photo I all the same find like a reflection of the everyday life.I like the big forests also,the timberlands in which Damon has shot very beautiful photos as well.
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Christian Vandermotten (Town Planner and Geographer University Libre of Brussels)
1.) (…) the play on the contrasts particularly well underlines the shadows,the shadows coming from the trees.And so the question we ask ourselves immediately is : But where is the sun ? How will I find my way ? And when we look at the sky,the sky is black, there’s no sun.So basically it’s like Magritte,it’s like Magritte since you have the black colour and the clearness at the same time on the same painting,here,on the same photo.
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Gil Bartholeyns (Researcher at the Quai Branly,Paris,CNRS Chair in “visual studies and culture”) “Talking about a photographic work on the theme of the forest”
1.) I have the feeling of a totally familiar space,but this familiarity is literarily destroyed by the chromatism.It’s a disfamiliarization function of which Victor Chkovski talked about and which for him is certainly the function of art,that’s to say the fact of bringing back,of seeing anew the things we didn’t see anymore.
2.) The summer is in the magenta colour,in the deep black of the shadows.So San Damon suggests to us to question ourselves anew about our perceptive or perceptual habits,be they totally natural or naturalized.
3.) Hence it’s for me a landscape painting and the first time I saw it,it made me think of the Albrecht Dürer’s dream vision,I made a link probably because I know that the photographic technique created by San Damon,the Oniroscopism,so the dream,
has the function of watching.
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Jean Noël Missa (Doctor in Philosophy,
President of the Belgian Society of Philosophy )
« Talking about photographic works of the forest »
2.) The first four photos make me think of the objectivist point of view,where we see trees,neurons,we see the brain and then we gradually pass through the missing link.It’s the link between the brain,the spirit,between the point of view of the third person and the point of view of the first person.We go into the mind,into the solipsism of these psychotic patients who are going to undergo a direct treatment without a doctor’s intervention,since the master San Damon’s system,the self-therapeutic machine perhaps is going to help them and so the psychiatrist might become unnecessary,he very well knows,the psychiatrist who’s conscious of himself,that his knowledge is very precarious,very imperfect.
3.) So may be a last word,a last comment about chance and the role of chance as well in science as in photography and in art.It’s known that San Damon,when he creates his oniroscopist technique,has been a little bit helped by chance,since some flasks…..he was in his studio in New York,then flasks fell on his shots.And then he caught this event related to chance in order to make something extraordinary,a new technique,a new conception of photography.
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Oscar Bernstein (Art Collector)
2.) The enormous handicap of contempora--ry art is that it doesn’t any more create,it repeats the past,San Damon is a special miracle.
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