Wilder Man, Charles Fréger
Sought out this book after finding some images from it on line.
It was on my dining table when my friend Louise popped over last weekend and she told me more about his work; she cane into contact with him through organising Format festival in Derby. Apparently he's lovely. She knows everyone.
For two years in 2010 and 2011, Charles Fréger criss-crossed Europe from north to south, from Finland to Portugal, passing through Romania, Germany and Slovenia, in search of the figure of the savage as it survives in local popular traditions.
These images, like archetypes, half-man half-beast, animal or vegetable, resurface from the depths of time on the occasion of ritualistic, pagan or religious festivals, celebrating the cycle of the seasons, the fat days, carnival or the eve of Easter. In the common fund of the European rural societies, these characters or emblematic animals represented protective figures or symbols of fertility. Today they evoke an imaginary, impulsive and physical world where everyone perceives an ancestral relationship with nature where the springs of our animality and sometimes the regressive desire inherent in some of our behaviors emerge. Charles Fréger speaks of “a zoomorphic figure whose rudimentary aspect and ritualistic dress refer to a universal nudity”.
The outfit does not allow any glimpse of skin, the human figure is completely buried under an avalanche of heavy furs, wools, bells, horns and other materials and accessories. Here again, photographing outside the periods of festivals or carnivals, he stages these characters in a natural environment that he often chooses to be wide and open. There is also this other freedom taken with regard to the silhouettes themselves, not hesitating to omit some voluntarily, and to photograph others from behind, claiming the partiality of his inventory, more poetic than scientific.
Really enjoying the visceral, magical, timeless, bizarre and organic qualities in these images and want to incorporate that in my next rug design.
