A gauche Isabelle Girollet et à Droite Michel Roux
Interview of Michel Roux, Poet, 28/01/2015
Participation in Isabelle Girollet’s book “Photographic Abstraction”
Camille Delcour: Michel Roux, who are you?
Michel Roux: I was born in Toulon in April 1946. Engineer, I exercised my profession as a computer scientist.
I owe my first poetic dreams to the readings and the French singers of the fifties, sixties…. Brassens, Brel, Anne Sylvestre, Barbara, Ferrat, Férré ….
A recent and amazing discovery of abstract painting and contemporary art, thanks to a friend painter.
I started writing four years ago, and for two years I try to progress by working in two writing workshops at Saint Andrier and Ollioules.
CD: How did you artistically meet with Isabelle Girollet?
MR: First meeting at the SIAC in Marseille. I stopped on the stand Isabelle seduced by the beauty of her photos, which first from far I thought to be abstract paintings. I see her again a month later in Arcueil to buy a photography. We spoke more in depth about his work. I tell her what I love. Light, purity and balance of shapes and colors, the movement. The mystery of abstraction that leaves room to dream. I choose « Stellar » without knowing the title Isabelle gave to the photo.
I tell her about my pleasure to write. Then, to my surprise, she proposed me to write lyrics for a book she wanted to publish. I say surprise, but as immense joy. As soon as I went back in Saint Mandrier I send her my first text. It concerned « Stellar » I still didn’t know the title then, but if the text speaks of the cosmos this couldn’t be by chance!
Thus begins our beautiful adventure.
CD: How do you proceed to write on photographs?
MR: First it must be said I do not know anything about photography. I only have the images from Isabelle’s website. So I have no titles and of course not even a clue of what has been taken on the photos. For the rest, I write on Isabelle’s photos like a landscape or a moment of life. I wrote a poem that explains quite well how everything goes:
Writing
And I would leave the images and words
Be inked in my heart.
Then one day,
They cross other images,
And other words.
*
Then they will find
The words to write them.
It is exactly how the words are coming for me.
CD: What is your message in Isabelle Girollet’s book?
MR: I haven’t any message. I simply wish to accompany the so beautiful work of Isabelle. I want to do so without altering the course and by avoiding enclosing it in “my vision”. I say what I felt, what I dreamed in front of the photo, but I want to drive another look free to feel and dream something else.
The message is Isabelle and her work that wear it.
Thank you M. Roux for answering to our few questions.
Find Isabelle Girollet’s book with Michel Roux’ poems on the website of the Nanga Editions.
