Born on the 6th of November 1956 in Isle-sur-la-Sorgue, he starts doing photography at an early age. In 1979, he wins the annual competition of PHOTO magazine. Following a publication in the magazine, he is contacted by Willy Ronis. This meeting encourages him to continue doing photography as the same time as his teaching career. In the early 80s he devotes himself exclusively to colour photography and starts to develop Cibachrome prints.
Photographer of small landscapes, with a simple
glance André Pharel manages to reveal a site and bestow true beauty
and majesty upon minuscule and common places. Bushes, thickets,
tangles, water holes are transfigured and suddenly transformed into
places filled with soul and poetry.
His pieces testify of a great
sensibility to transparence, nourished perhaps by the clearness of
the waters of the Sorgue, they express a fascination for « looking
through » and lead to a transformation of the relation to
matter.
The crossingss, declined in multiple ways, transport us to
subtle universes where we discover a different vision which makes us
see the world differently.
Crossing-roaming the hills or along
rivers; crossing-games of transparency or reflections on the windows
of botanical gardens; crossing of thickets and other bushes, causing
the world to penetrate in a direct and almost animal way, evoking
what we could imagine primitive sensations. And then, odd crossings
which let us discover, by taking care of light and proximity, in a
particular way, a transformed substance, for it is partially
dematerialized.
The work of André Pharel is the proposition of a new look on the world never seen before, a rediscovery of our immediate and instantly forgotten perceptions by allowing, by a deconstruction of our intellectualize lecture of the world, a return to the first vision, leading sometimes to abstraction. The transfiguration of reality is at the heart of his photography work.
