Plus d’apparence mais autre chose, que les mots de vérité, d’être, de réalité ne concernent pas, n’atteignent pas. Quelque que chose que chaque visage et chaque corps tiennent pour réel, sans rien en fixer, sans rien endire mais sans rien en sceller. Quelque chose d’étranger… D’étranger à cette puissance qui prend possession des souffles, des souffrances, des expressions trop contrôlées… Et qui l’excède et la porte au loin.

Loin de toute croyance, de toute pensée préconçue, de tout regard informé. Il y a là une sursensibilité, très différente de ce que l’on nommerait surexposition. Quelque chose encore qui ne se laisse pas plaquer, d’entré dans les têtes et finit par se laisser voir comme une pénétration douce des regards eux-mêmes. Peut-être une violence dévoyée d’elle-même.

Un gris natif.

Carène de ce temps qu’aucune puissance ne peut noyer.

Arche de ce temps– sans texte, sans passé apparent, sans histoire que chacun, pourtant remue en soi. Arche muette – au moins en ces instants de pose (de pause). Instants qui ne nie rien ; même celui qui photographie cela ne s’attend pas à être vu : les sens invoqués sont autres. Et l’attente aussi.

Ces photogrphies ne sont pas saisissantes. Elles n’ont pas cette raison d’être qui voudrait qu’elles nous surprennent. Elles obéissent à une exigence à la fois plus lourde et plus infiniment légère : elles sont inchavirables…

Tenues de faire plan– d’en dresser la nécessité– sous l’algue des regards. Tenues de ne pas sombrer sous la pression qui interdit les larmes. Interdiction non concertée mais commune ; c’est en chacune des personnes ici photographiées que ce quyi a été vu est porté hors de vue. Vers cet espace qui ignore toute forme même intaillée, même incise, de condamnation.

Du passé aucune indiscrétion : détenus et gardiens se tiennent sur ce même fond. Il n’y a pas à révéler– à revenir vers ce qui serait une scène de révélation. Celle-ci, en ces instants, n’est qu’absence ou non-lieu. Et la singularité des corps n’y contrevient pas : d’un mouvement que les jours et les nuits, abandonnés ou oppressants, durs ou survoltés, n’enserrent pas.

« En vous les yeux du marcheur débouchent les autres regards

Un unique

flot

s’enfle (…).

(Paul Celan, Contrainte de lumière).

Les yeux. Les yeux débouchent.

(On le pressent : il faudrait ici écrire sous cette ligne de regards ou plutôt le long de cette ligne. Dire comment les choses y sont à flot. Et les corps, soutenus par un poids sans nom, poids relatif et précaire mais dégagé d’un sourd effet de masse comme si chacune de ces personnes avait laissé monter en elle une intime ligne de gravité dont le dessin, toujours à retracer, conjurait toute forme de défiguration. C’est âpre et nu. C’est unique et monte comme un flot. C’est l’énigme que ces photographies relèvent : l’origine nait en chaque point où le passé s’efface…)

                                             Daniel Dobbels

Ce sont des couples. En principe des couples. Ou des familles, des petites trius. Mais ce n’est pas cela qui nous frappe. Ce qui nous frappe, c’est qu’il y en a toujours un (ou nue) qui nous regarde étrangement, avec insitance. Avec plus d’insistance que celui, celle ou ceux avec qui il partage la photo de famille. Une insistance qui ressemble à de la supplication muette. Comme s’il ne suffisait plus de poser pour l’album de famille pour autentifier, du même coup, la famille. Comme si tous ces personnages comparaissaient un à un ou deux par deux devant nous avec l’espoir insensé que nous n’allons pas voir que ce n’est pas vrai, que se ne sont pas des couples, qu’ils viennent juste de se rencontrer et que s’ils posent, c’est pour faire plaisir au photographe, pour jouer au « comme si ».

Certains jouent à brandir (comme des preuves) des enfants qui sont peut-être les leurs, d’autres se rapprochent terriblement l’un contre l’autre comme si l’extrème proximité créait on ne quel sentiment de co-appartenance, et pourtant, ce n’est jamais concluant : il y a bien là une volonté effrenée, studieuse, un peu exagérée de « faire couple » ou de « faire groupe », mais c’est cette volonté que nous voyons, comme un gag désespéré. On dira que ce sont peut-être de vrais parents, de vrais enfants. Qu’importe. Nous sommes à l’époque de l’individualisme, c’est-à-dire à l’époque où ceux qui vivent ensemble qont moins assurés de finir par se ressembler.

Chacun garde sa façon à lui (ou à elle) d’affirmer qu’il n’est pas seul. Façons forcées, volontiers tonitruantes, maladroites et qui n’empêchent pas la solitude d’être là, dans un regard moins intense, dans un rien de fatigue, dans un geste qui ne se rencontre plus naturellement, dans un manque d’illusion quant à notre verdict. Est-ce que nous n’allons pas, lassés par ce castinh par trop improvisé, dire à ces personnages : assez joué, allez, rentrez chez vous !

Ce qui est beau dans ces photos, c’est d’abord le noir d’encre du doute. C’est ensuite que le doute est inégalement réparti entre les figures. Il y a toujours quelqu’un que la scène ne rassure pas, qui pose moins, qui n’y croit pas. C’est parfois un enfant qui s’ennuie plus que les autres, un bébé absent, un tiers qui souffre d’être en trop dans le tableau, une femme ceinturée mais perplexe ou des hommes d’affaires si semblabless qu’un des trois est forcément de trop (oui mais lequel, celui qui ne porte pas de lunettes ?).

Ces photos sont bien d’aujourd’hui. Elles permettent de voir à quel point nous avons perdu la ressemblance et à quel point nous avons substitué aux fatalités de la parenté les pesenteurs de l’alliance. C’est dans notre façon de ne plus vouloir ressembler que nous nous ressemblons désormais.

                                             Serge Daney

« What asked K… pretending, on purpose, not to understand.

« Isn’t that a judge sitting in that chair? »

«  Yes, said the painter, but not a great one? He’s never sat on a throne like that. »

« And yet he had himself painted in such a dignified pose? He looks the president of the court! »

« Yes, these men are quite vain », the painter responded. « But the high authority authorizes them to be portrayed that way. It prescribes exactly how they have the right to be painted ».

[…]

« So, what’s the judge’s name», he asked point-blank.

« I’m not authorised to tell », the painter responded.

Franz Kafka, The Trail.

You cannot photograph a judge with impunity. In Kafka’s The Trial, it is well worth remembering

that Joseph K. learns his most significant lesson about justice from Totorelli, the painter recommended by one of the industrialists who are his clients… Maybe this is because the portraitist, whether yesterday’s painter, or today’s photographer, always steals something away from justice. Not surprisingly, the ancient fear of images and their power endures to this day in certain cultures. Portraits - this is what makes them both strong and threatening – are said to have the inquisitorial power of capturing « the soul », that is – to elaborate on the judicial metaphor – of investigating into a meaning which otherwise remains off limits and laying it bare. Thus does Christian Courrèges in the series unveil hidden meanings – admittedly a paradoxical expression when speaking of judges in wigs – in a process which is made all the more effective by juxtaposition of two legal systems, the British and the French.

One might expect distinctions between representatives of two legal systems which could not be further apart: civil law and common law[1]. But instead, we are surprise by their similarities. The symbolic elements of their costumes are essentially the same: the chromatic scale, dominated by gold, white, black and red, the tie or neck-collar in lace or fabric, the draping of the robes, the wide cut of the clothes (particularly of the sleeves), the dalmatic[2], the fur, the train that certain judges hold in one hand (French robes are also equipped with one, but it is attached to the inside of the garment). And the wig? true, we do not have wigs on this side of the English Channel, but we do have mortiers – caps tar evoke the royal crown – donned here by certain French magistrates in preparation for the trial of the flash.

Today’s viewer will find that all these judges, though different, seem equally anachronistic: their costumes are from an other age. Which age? The various influences are so well melded that is truly difficult to say. The back, worn both by young French magistrates and certain English judges, is incontestably of clerical origin, whereas the purple is an attribute of sovereignty. The majestic garb worn by the president of the highest court of appeal in France is practically identical to the coronation attire worn by the kings of France – paradoxical, to say the least, in country that boasts of having definitively rid of the monarchy, and what’s more, after a trial. Unless, following our initial hypothesis, we consider that the pictures gives the lie to that same old song of republic and surreptitiously preserves, despite the official ideology, a monarchical image which we could not do without. As – who knows? – the French were thus trying to make amends with the murder father figure, and purge an unconscious sense of guilt. It is being in a Buñuel film: monarchy subsists, but no one seems to recognize its presence. The reign of the visible organizes a collective form of blindness (did we not say that images are subversive? …).

This resemblance between the judges in a monarchy (albeit a very constitutional monarchy) and their colleagues in a republic – a simile liable to upset the Phrygian caps of certain revolutionary fundamentals – can be analyzed from both sides of the fence: as a confession of the impossibility of ridding ourselves of age-old tutelary powers, or as a sign of the possibility of our rising above national differences…to build a future together through the memory of a shared past. These great judges are also the little soldiers of Europe, Europe in the legal sense than the political. People who attire themselves in such a way necessarily share a common language. At a time when Heads of State are battling over a constitution, judges are patiently elaborating a Europe ruled by law, and laying a foundation of judicial unity.

These judges express themselves only in the present tense; but for them, the present has the value of the imperative, it is the tense of the time immemorial, like that the common law which is said to be an « unbroken fabric ’; They are the contemporaries of the authors of the code civil (whose bicentennial is being celebrated this year), of lord Mansfield (Montesquieu friend’s), and of Jean Monnet. Maybe this is what explains that aristocratic air, to tell the truth, seems to fit the English so much better than their continental colleagues; We see this in their faces, as well as in their posture – less forced on that side of the Channel – and even more so, in the way they hold their hands. The hands of the English judges are incontestably nobler, more aristocratic. Appropriately enough, it is on a glove held by one of these hands appears the royal motto to be seen in the series, « Honni soit qui mal y pense ». Some of the French judges let their arms dangle as if, having just left the courtroom, their dramatic gesturing now over, they don’t quite know what to do with their hands; two young magistrates have solved the problem by crossing their arms, which gives them a look of self-assurance.

These faces are timeless; they have not aged once since the 18th century; if they do not seem to grow old, maybe it is because they have always been so. Even the youngest look mature. But then again, come to think of it, these characters are more than just mature, or old : they are themselves timeless. Their costume releases them from the grip of time, delivers them from finitude, and even seems to free them of theirs bodies’ weight; they become nothing more than body doubles of the king.

Most of these costumes are not worn for ordinary hearings: they are reserved for the ceremonies of the opening of legal year during which all these lords – and many others as well – form a procession, or for the solemn court hearings of the Autumn. These costumes are for show, in the true sense of the word, which is to say they are intended to be shown only during those very special occasions that draw large crowds and eager journalists. The public space, nana Arendt reminds us, is by definition a place for show. A judge is his outfit; this is so true that English judges don’t even own robes, which are merely loaned to them for the duration of their office. These insignia of power will continue to be handed down like legal precedents, and will endure through time like our old courthouse walls, open to all who enter them – the great figures as well as the strange bedfellows who temporarily inhabit them… unless a revolutionary storm devastates the courts of Britain. Take a good look at these costumes: in a few months they may have disappeared. They will have taken up permanent residence in the showcases of the Royal Courts of Justice, where they are put on display in the interim between solemn events. A strong wind of reform is blowing over the country – the current government, after all, did get rid of the Lord Chancellor in a single night[3]. The most conservative country is not necessarily the one we think… The English ministry has launched an Internet survey to find out what the British people think of their judges’ costume. And you? What do you think? Will this collection of portraits change the way you see them?

Let’s try to forget the costumes a minute – if that’s possible- so that we can concentrate on the faces… unless that is precisely the function of the robe, of its repeated appearance on each judge: to make the face stand out. Here, the role of the robe hides the entire body, leaving only the face visible.

In this photographs, the body is dramatized, the attitudes affected, the gestures composed. Does this make them artificial? No – for these men are nothing but their professional function. It is the opposite – to make them look natural – that would be hypocritical: can you imagine a judge in full dress behind the wheel of his car, or in the courthouse cafeteria? True, the ideology of authenticity that dominates our times, and the current predilection for what goes on behind the scenes over actual events, have, with the help of television, inured us to such hypocrisy; but these figures bear witness to another age of communication which, to borrow the categories of mediology, stood halfway between the iconic and the indexical. Yes, these judges have posed, and that is why they interest us. In their pose, they not only tell us something about the institution of justice, they also give us an idea of how they conceive of they role, and of the image they want to project. In spite of themselves, they reveal a truth about themselves that shines through these photos. Their habitus, as Bourdieu would say speaks on their behalf. The photographer has not stolen from them; he has only captured what remained hidden…

Austere, serious, severe… The French judges definitely look the part. The English judges too, you’d say – except that their part isn’t the same! French judges are used to speaking to people, meeting them face-to-face, even if it’s only to give them »the evil eve »- whereas the function of the common law judge dictates that that he keep a distance from the ordinary man, whom he never addresses. His role to listen to speeches and to arbitrates cross-examinations, so relaxed? In some of them, you can detect a hint of provocation, an edge of mockery, which says more about their independence than any constitution (the British, by the way, still don’t have one!).

Why do these faces look so familiar to us? We have already seen them in the painting of Larguillierre or Hogarth. Obviously the portrait of the English councillor owes much to Van Dyck’s famous painting of a magistrate. However the trustee in the work by the Flemish master is seated, his robe is all black, and the look on his blotchy face is at once satisfied and the touch austere; the photographer on the other hand has chosen to show his models standing (even the judges of the bench), which reinforces their hieratic aspect, while cutting them off below the knees, which has the effect of bringing them closer to us. We look them straight in the face – not from the side, like Van Dyck’s magistrate, who seems to have just interrupted a conversation to turn and look at us. The uniform deep red background gives the collection of portraits its unity. No sets, and no props, either: not a single codebook, constitution, or parchment in hand. The face-to-face meeting between judge and spectator is unmediated and abstract from time. The judges are at once pure function pure individuality, creating an altogether modern representation of judicial power, freed of context and limited to the men themselves.

Christian Courrèges has in this manner organized quite an unusual encounter between us, the viewers, and the judges. Unlike the judges that Titorelli painted, we know their names end titles. Let us boldly meet their gaze, and not be intimidated by self-assurance; after all, do they not exist through our vision of them, that is thanks to our trust? These photos derive their strength from a curious and paradoxical combination of aristocratic distance and democratic proximity: the official attire of these judges draws them away from us, while their faces draw us near; in the lies the whole dilemma of the modern man: he has discovered that aristocratic elements are essential to making a democracy work – a fact Tocqueville understood very early on.

This is why these photos are so alive: the judges want to be seen, and we enjoy seeing them close up. We have left the age of Kafka and the official painters behind. Today, we have the right to photograph judges – here’s the proof – and to meet them eye-to-eye.

                              Antoine Garapon

Secretary General of the Institute des Hautes Études de la Justice

At the first sight, all the cardinals photographed by Christian Courrèges appear to look like; Yet everything about the photographs contradict this first glance: the way in which the cardinals pose; the elements of their costume that work as powerful signifiers of their function – the cross, the ring, the colors of the vestments (the red and black, the white of the lace chasuble and the wintry ermine); the way they hold their hands-folded, in repose, the right hand with the prelatic ring most often covering the left one.

The first glance never holds, confronted by gaze with which these “men” meet the photographer and the world

These “men”: for indeed, these are all men, men who have all reached the ripe old age of cardinals. They look at the world with an eye more or less kind, more or less complicated, an eye, which they would like neutral, and which sometimes is lit up with a hint of a smile. The portraits show them almost in full length. They are standing, imposing, on a level with the viewer. Less shepherds than figures of authority and trust: their habit speaks for them. Madness, it is said, is when you mistake your function for your being. Power is different. Or, perhaps, it is just the superior form of madness, condensing the moment when function believes itself man.

Following this first glance (which is even less trustworthy than a first impression), each singular detail begins to reveal slight but definitive differences: the differences between rochet, stole, and mantelleta; differences between the various types of pectoral crosses (crux pendilis, quadrata, fidelis or capitata). Same differences, based on a constant differentiation of the same. Do these differences have something to do with the cardinals themselves? Of course. Each one asserts the uniqueness of his being through a series of choices. Choices that are made at every moment of their lives, choices which engage them head to foot, and in which preferences, taste, tradition, cultural heritage, and maybe even a degree of coquettishness, are clearly made visible. Each one has marked his preferences in response to (or so we can at least suppose) a set of variables: the pressure of the entourage, the influence of mannerisms, the pull of imitation, and of desire. Even the difference demonstrated by one cardinal is weighed exactly in proportion to the awareness of his rank; in the beginning, perhaps, he may still have resented such marks of vanity and luxury as impediments.

In this world of the invisible, all that counts is the visible. This is the only aspect that interests the photographer whose aim is to reveal the secret of what he sees through a slow gaze. It is not preposterous to think that these infinite nuances of signs, meaning and language are governed by reading rules and a grammar, which we, the viewers, seeing but red and black, ignore. Bullfighters, magistrates, and by extension almost all official bodies or corporations obey the same linguistic order.

May be it would suffice to decipher the organisation chart of cardinals with its “Secretaries of state”, “ Cardinals Penitentiary” (of which the Cardinal Major penitentiary is represented here), 3Prefects of congregation” and other such “Master of Papal Liturgical Celebrations”. This little bit of knowledge might be enough to help us understand the system, to order and attribute its marks and significant traits, and distinguish what linguists world call the double articulation of this language; maybe it would be possible to learn the subtle differences between the choir habit, the abito piano, and other liturgical vestments through deduction or practice, just in the same way that one learns a language, a musical score, a code through practice?

Under the mozetta, the dalmatic, the simars and lappets, the complex and expeditious network of signs of power, of all power, unfolds its script, which both open book and secret code; the strength of the images and their combination invites new questions; who is this man, the photographer, that contemporary of ours, one to us yet so different at the same time, for whom these princes of church have accepted to reveal their being, and be caught in a moment when shedding both glory and diffidence, they are just themselves, in the here and now. How does one talk to them? Persuade them? Convince them to take part in this experiment, Who is he, this man, who feels such a puzzling urge to stage his own self in front of subjects?

For him, this invisible stage director, whose presence can only be guessed beyond the frame, the prelates accept to play a game. This attitude is unexpected enough to startle the photographer out of his initial attitude of condescension and invite him to go beyond the first superficial glance.

All these men are wearing robes; they are not the only men to do so. Indeed, their robe is not a feminine in the least. Roland Barthes, we learn in a book of memoirs, whose author was the critic’s companion as a young man, missed the time when men freely wore gowns: gowns, which are so comfortable, leave the body so free, and allow such freedom of movement. The gown worn by the prelates is not of this kind. Whatever their specific title may be (cardinal auditor, in pectore, nephew, palatine, patronus or ponent), the robes worn by these cardinals perceive from the start as an anachronism? We think we know the vestment. We haven’t yet given our attention to the variable theories of buttons, ermine, belts tied below the chest. These we haven’t looked at yet, but noticed the face. It is a face of today, a modern face, sporting a very contemporary pair of glasses, a classic but contemporary hairstyle, and shaved in a manner, which is familiar to us from professors and businessmen. The complexion reflects current rules of hygiene and eating habits, the skin tones are more or less cool and “the brow audacious”.

“Audacious brow”, faithfulness, and obedience, such are some of qualities, which the French renaissance poet Joachim Du Bellay attributed to cardinals in sonnet 118 of Regrets, a book written in Rome while he lived there under the patronage of a relative who was himself a cardinal. Du Bellay describes the Roman cardinals as men “whose authority/Commands attention anon as befits their rank”; he calls them “these gentlemen”.

Today he would no longer call them “gentlemen”. Gentlemen-like, however, they accept the gaze of the photographer who in return is strong enough to resist either freezing his model’s expression in a snapshot or immobilizing them in a pose. He works quickly but takes his time in a moment. Everybody benefits from this manner of subverting photography to record a moment suspended in time. How shall we name this work? It is an exercise in applied anthropology? A collection of portraits? A transversal slice of the most important portion of the ancient world to have survived in our contemporary world? A study in the disappearance of man as man? Of what the hands do when the face poses for the camera?

And what if it were a scientific experiment, an experiment of the senses on the invisible body, on vision? An experiment, which reveals the power, the will and humble reality of mankind

                                        Francis Marmande