For twenty years I traveled the world shooting pictures for such French publications as Marie-Claire Maison, Résidences Décoration, Oui Magazine, Série Limitée, as well as for Arte, The Franco-German Cultural Channel. Twelve years ago I discovered Memphis Tennessee. I was totally electrified by the resonances of its music, and I immersed myself into a body of work anchored to my early childhood in Maryland. As if traveling by raft on America’s greatest rivers, this labor of love carried me from the Memphis Blues, to Mississippi, and then back to Maryland, offering me endless inspiration, enriched by a ballet of rare and rhythmical coincidences that came into my life. I call this weaving of synchronicities “signs” and visualize it like a red thread that I have pushed forward from inception. When we used to live in Maryland, my father would take my brother Hubert and me in a place out of time, hidden and nearly secret beside the Susquehanna River. In this landscape of water, large rocks and airy trees, with eagles turning in the sky by hundreds during their April migration, everything was soulful, obvious, clear and spiritual. While I was playing on this ground I know something related to Black History was coming to me: layer after layer, the deep brown and fertile earth was handing me down its stories which were to be caught softly but deeply in my subconscious.
CONTACT beachauvin@wanadoo.fr
