Thierry Genay

"Trois grains de poivre", photography by Thierry Genay, 2020

2020

Thierry Genay's photography is heir to a style of painting which, in the absence of noble and sublime motifs, is nourished by a perception of everyday life. His photographic compositions are part of this ever-renewed history of still life, itself a mirror of lifestyles, of a daily reality which is thus illustrated, humanistic or spiritual, of a reflection on the harmony of nature, but always an echo of the intimate. His work is a cabinet of curiosities composed of simple, natural, or manufactured objects. These are objects that lose their quality of use to become form and material, thus integrating that of the background. Modest objects that enhance each other to the point where, their values becoming equal, they blend into a composition that slides towards abstraction. It is a work in which one removes rather than adds. It is about orchestrating a precise silence, the expression of a seemingly quiet balance between forms and materials, between fullness and emptiness, between what is seen and what is not.