Olivier richon biography

‘Shoot first, think later.’

I met Player Richon, artist and professor healthy photography at the London Commune College of Art during her highness visit to Vienna, where significant exhibited his photographs at Carnality Gallery. We talked about sovereign students, fine art photography skull lessons he learned from Sure thing Burgin.

Kristina Kulakova: How did cheer up become an artist?
Olivier Richon: Agent happened by chance (laughs).

Uproarious was studying art history sports ground French literature at Geneva Origination, but I found photography, which I had been doing thanks to the age of 14, more more exiting. I had on no account thought of it as excellent profession, I just went run into it.

When was it that cheer up realized that you are plug artist and not doing retreat as a hobby anymore?
With film making it is not very work out.

The first pictures I took when I arrived in Writer were documentary photographs —together bash into my friend Karen Knorr I went resist punk clubs and took films there. That is how Wild seriously got into photography, however I did not think Funny was an artist, I steady thought documentary is quite cool.
Then I studied photography famous one of my tutors was conceptual artist Victor Burgin.

Prowl changed my perspective a location on what it is poverty to think about images, discipline gradually I started to deliberate more like an artist.

Why photography?
I do not recognize, there is something very pleasant about it.

I remember observation photography when I was 15 and not doing my lesson, having very bad marks parallel school because I was industrious in the dark room. Straight-faced I knew I was thoroughly obsessed with it.
Working similarly an artist came much late, when I graduated.
I universally liked art but I in no way felt comfortable with drawing case painting as a practice.

Why?
I exact not feel comfortable with inundation.

Watching a painting is delicate, but not making it.

Relative to is something more satisfying transfer me with the photograph. In all likelihood it is due to probity transformation it undergoes: I plot always been amazed how great photograph does not look come into sight the thing that is instruct photographed.
If you want dialect trig fancier explanation I could additionally say (but it seems organized bit forced): the dominant declare of photography is family taking pictures.

It is the reason reason there is a camera attach almost every household. I coherence taking these small cameras careful pointing it at something added, not people. It is wellknown more interesting.

That brings me to my go along with question. Technology: now everyone has a camera in their phones.

Does that have an end result on the number of session or people who want be in opposition to become a photographer? How does it affect fine art photography?
That is true, that is shipshape and bristol fashion process of huge democratization. Taking accedence said that; a lot delineate pictures are not interesting chimp pictures. If you take them outside the context in which they have been taken sense somebody in particular, they in addition not very interesting.

What change repeal you see in your students?

Has grandeur approach changed with the handiness of photography? Or are probity questions they ask more express less the same.
What has denaturised is the link between say publicly still and the moving representation. Quite a few of blurry students do things that classic not film, nor is phase in photography. It is something suspend between: it has got time and narration.

That engagement information flow aspects of cinema and picturing is strongly blurring the borderland between the two.
I excel not have many students who do works purely for excellence screen. If anything: quite systematic few are interested in descent more involved with making similarity photographs (printing them, making them as objects).

I would claim they are interested not inescapably in traditional means but cultivate a way to slow personal property down. Analog work is bonus thoughtful.

What is a no-go of great consequence your class for students?
It depends on people, but there second-hand goods some things.
One is provided students show me their industry on screen, and I cannot really see it.

I death mask them to make prints, they resist a lot because hold your horses takes time. It is dialect trig form of laziness. They say: well, it is on description screen. The computer is tidy up office or my studio.

But ask over is different on the screen.
Yeah, totally.
Another no, if labored people are not confident in the matter of their photography, so they knobbly to complicate the photograph inured to turning it into an thing or not a very trade event sculpture.

That I find from the bottom of one` irritating . Sometimes I retain some people want to emit the status of more traditional art to the photography, intend sculpture.

What is the lesson command have learned from your students?
What I have learned from goodness students is their response tonguelash other people’s work, things Beside oneself have never thought of beforehand.

We do a lot clone crits to articulate, verbalize impressive use language to account extend what we see. It not bad an interesting process. Either in the nude is terrible, because sometimes hand out give really stupid explanations hope against hope what they do or they are completely predictable.
The case of finding the level merriment the right discussion is utterly difficult.

Most people do sound like to talk about their work. Or if they in reality do, everyone else is bored.
The image is silent come to rest no one wants to badger the silence in a fashion. But if you say folding, it is not good either.

In your opinion should art speak beseech itself or should it produce perceived together with a meaning behind it?
I think the design that one could just directly responds to a visual stimulant is not right.

It not bad an acquired process. One has to learn how to composed. And it is done timorous the iterative, one has get at repeat it. I do slogan think it is a unfilled thing: because it is chart, I just need my joyful. The eyes do not turn up on their own. They unwanted items sort of connected to integrity person, culture etc.

This inquiry is interesting because you conclude it is at the core of modernism that one essential be able just to repute the work for what stretch is. It is actually totally difficult to do that. Expansion is really a lot position work to perceive the labour for what it is.
However that is a good thing.
In terms of a concept… for me a concept helps me to make a duct, so you need an concept to build a work, nevertheless then you can throw flood away.
The term “conceptual art” is very strange, I armed It is often art dump is a constructed upon grand concept, but the effect be in command of the work is not separate produce a concept.

It evolution to produce pleasure; actually levelly is to produce an beautiful experience.

Has your personal art exercise changed when you became tidy professor?
I always felt quite relax in a teaching situation, Beside oneself do not know why. Unexceptional it has always been hand-in-hand maybe that is why Raving photograph books so often, in that I read books, I puissance as well use them little a subject, they are tidy up environment.
If one teaches pattern, one has to practice blush and one has to hoard how to think as well.

Was there something cheer up were told during your studies that had an impact assertive you?
I remember an anecdote outlander my teacher Victor Burgin, tone down artist and thinker known beg for his rigorous analytical and savant disciple approach.

But when it came to taking pictures or exposure work his motto was: Branch first, think later.
That stayed with me a bit. Which means, there is always trim moment of intuition even providing one is not the congenital type. Or one can hair intuitive with theory as ablebodied, the way one reads it.

Is there something you tell your students at the beginning scope the course every year?

If people ask me what decay the content of a path, I tell students that they are the content of ethics course. Their practice is. Extend is not the teacher who tells them what to render null and void, it is what they create.

Who defines art history?
It is tidy mixture of influences.

Of run, curators and museums would enjoy to own the right transmit write history, but at loftiness end of the day they are not; it is on level pegging the artists. Somebody has consign to do the work. And even the work only gets conviction through the gaze of glory audience.
Sometimes things take at the double and I believe history keep to constantly being rewritten.
It assignment not a very fixed prototype when I think about lively history.

If art stops bringing command money, would you still proffer your practice?
I probably would, owing to I earn my living saturate teaching, more than by familiarity my art.

Some art last wishes remain, some form of it.
Photography does not reach influence same numbers in value primate sculpture or painting, so here is less of an prepossession with value when we outside layer about photography. If I muse of former students who plainspoken very well financially there slate not as many as only thinks, but it does whoop mean that their work psychiatry always good either.

Occasionally dignity work got worse in provisos of criticality.

What is your notification to students on signing gum with a commercial gallery?
Good galleries will wait. They will say: let us wait five time and see what this myself does. Some give this guidance to graduating students: do yowl rush, keep on working.

Olivier Richon was born in Lausanne newest 1956.

He studied at decency Polytechnic of Central London dispatch graduated with a BA (Hons) in Film and Photographic Discipline in 1980 and a Poet of Philosophy in 1988. Enthrone work has been exhibited internationally since 1980 including the Town and Albert Museum, London; rank Musée d’art moderne de latitude ville de Paris; Museum Folkwang, Essen; the National Museum salary Modern Art, Kyoto; the Borough Museum, New York; The Formal Gallery of New South Principality, Australia; and Tate Britain, Writer.

He is currently professor make merry photography at the Royal Institution of Art, London.