Marc TRIVIER

Large original black and white photographic portrait by Marc Trivier.
Original silver gelatin print, unsigned as are most of Trivier's works.
A precious original silver print by the celebrated Belgian photographer, one of the most secretive contemporary artists who, despite early international success, chose to limit his output in order to preserve the coherence of his work. Marc Trivier no longer produces new prints of his earlier portraits; the photographic paper he used is no longer available. The artist "makes his own prints on Ilford baryta paper, devoting several days of work to each one, with a particular focus on rendering the whites in contrast to blacks of rare density. A print by Marc Trivier is unlike any other. When he agrees to exhibit them, he hangs them in stainless steel frames of his own making, allowing the paper to live freely." (Xavier-Gilles, “Marc Trivier et la tragédie de la lumière,” Le Monde Libertaire, 2011). This "life of the paper" is part of the work itself, just like the various alterations the photographs undergo when exposed: "In the boxes, the prints warp, but it doesn’t matter: the photographer is fond of such accidents." (Claire Guillot, “Les face à face sans échappatoire du photographe Marc Trivier,” Le Monde, 2011). Marc Trivier has a particular sensitivity to the material nature of his work. While photography is by essence a multiple art, the artist’s direct intervention in every stage of the creative process imparts an almost autographic aura to his prints.

Trivier’s photographs of artists, the insane, trees, or slaughterhouses are all approached with the same precise and intense gaze.

“In his cosmogony, every thing, every being—plant, animal or human—deserves the same respect. For all are confronted with the same iron law: solitude.” (Luc Desbenoit).

The beauty emanating from his photographs arises from their bareness. There is no retouching, no cropping. The same square format reappears throughout his work, reinforced by the square of the negative that Trivier leaves visible on his prints. This frame traps the viewer’s gaze within images where the disguise of color is rejected in favor of incisive black and white. With all artifice stripped away, we are not facing a staged subject but a presence heightened by radiant and singular light—a witness to a living moment rather than a posed one. It is this light, inseparable from the photographic medium, that unites Marc Trivier’s series:

“Marc Trivier’s photographs write a tragedy of light, one that only receives beings—humans, trees, or beasts—by burning them, before disappearance.” (Xavier-Gilles, Le Monde Libertaire).

Freed from all artifice, this light also gives his works the aura that makes them so strikingly alive. This “burning” light refers us back to a real instant, to Barthes’s “that-has-been” (Camera Lucida, 1980):

“After thirty-five years of photographic practice, of obsessions, perhaps what remains is this: a singular way of recording the burning of light, unfolding from one image to the next, a succession of propositions that resemble each other and yet each is as singular as the fraction of time to which it refers.” (Marc Trivier).

“Photography says only one thing: ‘It was.’ We fix only what has been. If there is a tragedy, it lies there.” (Marc Trivier)

Warhol, Foucault, Beckett, Dubuffet... the greatest writers and artists all sat for Trivier. At the same time, he also turns his attention to society’s margins, to what people prefer not to see. He photographs the insane and the slaughterhouses, setting them in counterpoint to the celebrated figures. By the late 1980s, his work had gained unanimous recognition, earning him the prestigious Young Photographer Award from the International Center of Photography in 1988 and the Prix Photographie Ouverte (Charleroi). After the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the Musée de l’Elysée in Lausanne and the Casino in Luxembourg, the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris devoted a major retrospective to him in 2011.

The portraits of major figures of his time that Marc Trivier produces do not aim to show the public image of these artists. Taken face-on, with their gaze directed at the lens, they reveal a private intimacy:

“(...) rather than being one more portraitist of writers and artists, he sets himself apart through his method: under the pretext of adjustments, he makes his models wait, posing for several minutes, which gives them a weary look. He perhaps awaits a more natural behavior. And so we find ourselves before Francis Bacon in precarious balance, Samuel Beckett, Jean Dubuffet or Michel Foucault slumped more or less in their chairs. Intimate images.” (Sylvie Rousselle-Tellier, “Une image de fatigue chez Marc Trivier,” Marges, 2004).

Photographed in their personal spaces—most often their rooms—the subjects let go, losing control over their own image. The resulting imbalance reveals the fragility of these powerful personalities, allowing Trivier to capture the unity between their private selves and their public work.

“I was reading Genet; for me Genet was just letters on a page. Then one day I saw his portrait—it was like a fracture. How was it possible that these signs were also someone? To make a portrait is to rejoin the name and the face.” (Marc Trivier).

More than a portrait, each photograph bears witness to an exchange between subject and artist, to a moment of real life. The photographer’s presence is palpable in each of Trivier’s portraits:

“What interested me was not simply photographing a body or a face, but that particular situation that is someone taking the photograph of someone else.” (Marc Trivier).

Large original black-and-white photographic portrait by Marc Trivier.
Original gelatin silver print, unsigned, as is the case with most of Trivier's works.
A rare original silver print by the celebrated Belgian photographer, one of the most secretive contemporary artists, who, despite early international success, chose to restrict his output in order to preserve the coherence of his work. Marc Trivier does not produce new prints of his earlier portraits; moreover, the printing paper he once used is no longer manufactured. The artist « réalise lui-même ses tirages sur papier baryté Ilford, consacrant plusieurs jours de travail à chacun, avec une concentration particulière pour rendre les blancs, par contraste avec des noirs d'une rare densité. Un tirage de Marc Trivier ne ressemble à aucun autre. Lorsqu'il accepte de les exposer, il les suspend dans des cadres en inox de sa fabrication, laissant libre cours à la vie du papier. » (Xavier-Gilles, « Marc Trivier et la tragédie de la lumière » in Le Monde Libertaire, 2011). This « life of the paper » is part of the work itself, just as the various alterations photographs undergo when exposed: « Dans les boites, les tirages gondolent, mais qu'importe : le photographe affectionne ce genre d'accident. » (Claire Guillot, « Les face à face sans échappatoire du photographe Marc Trivier », Le Monde, 2011). Trivier shows a singular sensitivity to the material dimension of his art. Although photography is by nature a medium of multiples, his direct intervention throughout the creative process confers an almost autographic aura on these prints.


Photographs of artists, the insane, trees or slaughterhouses—Marc Trivier approaches each of these subjects with a gaze at once precise and intense.

« Dans sa cosmogonie, chaque chose, chaque être, végétal, animal ou humain, mérite le même respect. Car tous sont confrontés à la même loi d'airain : la solitude. » (Luc Desbenoit).

The beauty that emanates from his images arises from this nakedness. There is neither retouching nor cropping. His work consistently preserves the square format, emphasized by the square of the negative left visible on his prints. This frame ensnares the gaze in images where the cosmetic distractions of colour are rejected in favour of incisive black and white. With all artifice removed, we are not confronted with staged subjects but with presences heightened by a singular, radiant light, witness to a lived moment rather than a posed one. It is this light, intrinsic to the photographic medium, that unites Trivier’s series:

« Les photographies de Marc Trivier écrivent une tragédie de la lumière, celle-ci n'accueillant les êtres - hommes, arbres ou bêtes - qu'en les brûlant, avant disparition. » (Xavier-Gilles in Le Monde Libertaire).

It is also this light, stripped of all artifice, that endows his works with the aura that makes them so compelling. This « burning » of the light recalls the reality of an instant, the « ça a été » of Barthes (La Chambre Claire, 1980):

« De trente-cinq ans de pratique photographique, d'obsessions, c'est peut-être ça qui reste : un mode d'enregistrement singulier de la brûlure de la lumière, décliné d'une image à l'autre, en une succession de propositions qui se ressemblent et pourtant chacune est aussi singulière que la fraction de temps auquel elle renvoie. » (Marc Trivier).

« La photographie ne dit qu'une chose : « C'était. » On ne fixe que ce qui a été. S'il y a une tragédie, elle est là. » (Marc Trivier)

Warhol, Foucault, Beckett, Dubuffet ... the greatest writers and artists sat for Trivier. At the same time, the artist turned his lens to the margins of society, to what men would rather not see. He photographed the mentally ill and slaughterhouses, setting them in counterpoint to celebrities. From the late 1980s his work was widely acclaimed, earning him the prestigious Young Photographer Award from the International Center of Photography in 1988 and the Prix Photographie Ouverte (Charleroi). After the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the Musée de l’Elysée in Lausanne and the Casino in Luxembourg, the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris devoted a major retrospective to him in 2011.



Trivier’s portraits of leading cultural figures are not intended to capture their public image. Shot head-on, with their gaze fixed on the lens, they instead reveal an intimate presence:

« (...) au lieu d'être un portraitiste d'écrivains et d'artistes parmi tant d'autres, il se marginalise par son dispositif : sous prétexte de réglages, il fait attendre ses modèles, il les fait poser plusieurs minutes ce qui leur donne un air las. Il attend peut-être un comportement plus naturel. Et on se retrouve face à Francis Bacon en équilibre précaire, Samuel Beckett, Jean Dubuffet ou encore Michel Foucault plus ou moins tassés sur leur chaise. Des images intimes. » (Sylvie Rousselle-Tellier, « Une image de fatigue chez Marc Trivier », Marges 2004).

Photographed in their private spaces, most often their rooms, the sitters abandon themselves, relinquishing control over their image. The imbalance that results exposes the vulnerabilities of these powerful personalities, allowing Trivier to restore unity between the intimate body and the public œuvre.

« Je lisais Genet ; pour moi Genet, c'était des lettres sur un livre. Et puis un jour j'ai vu son portrait, il y a eu comme une fracture. Comment était-il possible que ces signes soient aussi quelqu'un ? Faire un portrait, c'est ressouder le nom et le visage. » (Marc Trivier).

More than a portrait, each photograph is the testimony of an exchange between subject and artist, of a moment of real life. The presence of the photographer is palpable in every portrait Trivier makes:

« Ce qui m'intéressait, ce n'était pas de photographier simplement un corps ou un visage, mais cette situation particulière qui est quelqu'un en train de faire la photo de quelqu'un d'autre. » (Marc Trivier).

Large original black and white photographic portrait by Marc Trivier.
Original unsigned silver gelatin print, as is typical of most of Trivier's works.
Precious original silver gelatin proof by the renowned Belgian photographer, one of the most secretive contemporary artists, who despite early international success, preferred to limit his production to maintain the coherence of his work. Marc Trivier does not produce new prints of his old portraits, and the printing paper he used is no longer commercially available. The artist "makes his own prints on Ilford baryta paper, devoting several days of work to each one, with particular concentration on rendering the whites, in contrast with blacks of rare density. A Marc Trivier print resembles no other. When he agrees to exhibit them, he suspends them in stainless steel frames of his own making, allowing free rein to the life of the paper." (Xavier-Gilles, "Marc Trivier et la tragédie de la lumière" in Le Monde Libertaire, 2011). This "life of the paper" participates in the work just as much as the various alterations that photographs undergo when they are exhibited: "In the boxes, the prints warp, but no matter: the photographer is fond of this kind of accident." (Claire Guillot, "Les face à face sans échappatoire du photographe Marc Trivier", Le Monde, 2011). Marc Trivier has a particular sensitivity for the material aspect of his productions. While photography is essentially about multiples, this intervention by the artist in the entire creative process confers an autographic aura to these prints.


Photographs of artists, madmen, trees or slaughterhouses, Marc Trivier approaches all these subjects with a gaze that is as precise as it is intense.

"In his cosmogony, each thing, each being, plant, animal or human, deserves the same respect. For all are confronted with the same iron law: solitude." (Luc Desbenoit).

The beauty that emanates from his photos comes from this nakedness. There are no retouches, no cropping. We find in his work the same square format emphasized by the square of the negative that Trivier leaves on his prints. This frame traps our gaze in photographs where the makeup of color is rejected for an incisive black and white. With all artificiality having disappeared, we do not face the staging of a subject but a presence exacerbated by the radiating and singular light, witness to an instant of life and not of pose. It is this light, linked to the photographic medium, that unites Marc Trivier's series:

"Marc Trivier's photographs write a tragedy of light, which welcomes beings - men, trees or beasts - only by burning them, before disappearance." (Xavier-Gilles in Le Monde Libertaire).

It is also this light, freed from all artifice, that gives his works the aura that makes them so present. This "burning" of light refers us to a real instant, to Barthes' "that-has-been" (Camera Lucida, 1980):

"From thirty-five years of photographic practice, of obsessions, perhaps this is what remains: a singular mode of recording the burning of light, declined from one image to another, in a succession of propositions that resemble each other and yet each is as singular as the fraction of time to which it refers." (Marc Trivier).

"Photography says only one thing: 'It was.' One only fixes what has been. If there is a tragedy, it is there." (Marc Trivier)

Warhol, Foucault, Beckett, Dubuffet... the greatest writers and artists have posed for Trivier. Simultaneously the artist is also interested in the margins of society, in what men do not want to see. He then photographs the insane and slaughterhouses that he places alongside celebrities. From the late 1980s his work is unanimously recognized and he receives the prestigious Young Photographer Award from The International Center of Photography in 1988 as well as the Prix Photographie Ouverte (Charleroi). After the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the Musée de l'Elysée in Lausanne and the Casino in Luxembourg, the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris dedicates an important retrospective to him in 2011.



The photographs of the great personalities of his time that Marc Trivier creates do not seek to show the public image of these artists. Taken head-on, with a gaze directed toward the lens, they show us an image of intimacy:

"(...) instead of being a portraitist of writers and artists among so many others, he marginalizes himself through his approach: under the pretext of adjustments, he makes his models wait, he makes them pose for several minutes which gives them a weary air. He is perhaps waiting for more natural behavior. And we find ourselves facing Francis Bacon in precarious balance, Samuel Beckett, Jean Dubuffet or Michel Foucault more or less slumped in their chair. Intimate images." (Sylvie Rousselle-Tellier, "Une image de fatigue chez Marc Trivier", Marges 2004).

Photographed in their personal universe, most often their bedroom, the subjects abandon themselves, no longer control their image. The imbalance that results reveals the fragilities of these such strong personalities, and allows Trivier to restore the unity of the intimate body and the public work.

"I was reading Genet; for me Genet was letters on a book. And then one day I saw his portrait, there was like a fracture. How was it possible that these signs were also someone? Making a portrait is to weld together the name and the face." (Marc Trivier).

More than a portrait, each photo is the testimony of an exchange between the subject and the artist, of an instant of real life. The presence of the photographer is perceptible in each of the portraits that Trivier creates:

"What interested me was not simply to photograph a body or a face, but this particular situation which is someone in the process of taking a photo of someone else." (Marc Trivier).

Large original black and white photograph by Marc Trivier.
Original gelatin silver print unsigned, as with most of Trivier's works.
A precious original gelatin silver print by the celebrated Belgian photographer, one of the most secretive contemporary artists who, despite early international success, preferred to limit his production to preserve the coherence of his work. Marc Trivier does not make new prints of his earlier portraits, and the printing paper he used is no longer commercially available. The artist "makes his own prints on Ilford baryta paper, devoting several days of work to each one, with particular concentration on rendering the whites, in contrast with blacks of rare density. A Marc Trivier print resembles no other. When he agrees to exhibit them, he suspends them in stainless steel frames of his own making, allowing free rein to the life of the paper." (Xavier-Gilles, « Marc Trivier et la tragédie de la lumière » in Le Monde Libertaire, 2011). This "life of the paper" participates in the work in the same way as the various alterations that photographs undergo when they are exhibited: "Dans les boites, les tirages gondolent, mais qu'importe : le photographe affectionne ce genre d'accident." ["In the boxes, the prints warp, but what does it matter: the photographer is fond of this kind of accident."] (Claire Guillot, « Les face à face sans échappatoire du photographe Marc Trivier », Le Monde, 2011). Marc Trivier has a particular sensitivity to the material aspect of his productions. While photography is essentially multiple in nature, this intervention by the artist in the entire creative process confers an autographic aura to these prints.


Photographs of artists, madmen, trees or slaughterhouses, Marc Trivier approaches all these subjects with a gaze as precise as it is intense.


"Dans sa cosmogonie, chaque chose, chaque être, végétal, animal ou humain, mérite le même respect. Car tous sont confrontés à la même loi d'airain : la solitude." ["In his cosmogony, every thing, every being, plant, animal or human, deserves the same respect. For all are confronted with the same iron law: solitude."] (Luc Desbenoit).


The beauty that emanates from his photos comes from this nakedness. There are no retouches, no reframings. We find in his work the same square format emphasized by the square of the negative that Trivier leaves on his prints. This frame traps our gaze in photographs where the artifice of color is rejected for an incisive black and white. With all artificiality having disappeared, we do not face the staging of a subject but a presence intensified by the radiating and singular light, witness to an instant of life and not of pose. It is this light, linked to the photographic medium, that unites Marc Trivier's series:


"Les photographies de Marc Trivier écrivent une tragédie de la lumière, celle-ci n'accueillant les êtres - hommes, arbres ou bêtes - qu'en les brûlant, avant disparition." ["Marc Trivier's photographs write a tragedy of light, which only welcomes beings - men, trees or beasts - by burning them, before disappearance."] (Xavier-Gilles in Le Monde Libertaire).


It is also this light, freed from all artifices, that gives his works the aura that makes them so present. This "burning" of light returns us to a real instant, to Barthes' "that-has-been" (La Chambre Claire, 1980):


"De trente-cinq ans de pratique photographique, d'obsessions, c'est peut-être ça qui reste : un mode d'enregistrement singulier de la brûlure de la lumière, décliné d'une image à l'autre, en une succession de propositions qui se ressemblent et pourtant chacune est aussi singulière que la fraction de temps auquel elle renvoie." ["From thirty-five years of photographic practice, of obsessions, this is perhaps what remains: a singular mode of recording the burning of light, declined from one image to another, in a succession of propositions that resemble each other and yet each is as singular as the fraction of time to which it refers."] (Marc Trivier).

"La photographie ne dit qu'une chose : « C'était. » On ne fixe que ce qui a été. S'il y a une tragédie, elle est là." ["Photography says only one thing: 'It was.' We only fix what has been. If there is a tragedy, it is there."] (Marc Trivier)



Warhol, Foucault, Beckett, Dubuffet... the greatest writers and artists have posed for Trivier. Simultaneously the artist is also interested in the margins of society, in what men do not want to see. He then photographs the insane and the slaughterhouses that he places alongside the celebrities. From the end of the 1980s his work is unanimously recognized and he receives the prestigious Young Photographer Award from the International Center of Photography in 1988 as well as the Prix Photographie Ouverte (Charleroi). After the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the Musée de l'Elysée in Lausanne and the Casino in Luxembourg, the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris devotes an important retrospective to him in 2011.
The photographs of the insane that Trivier made in the same period were deliberately mixed with those of the artists during the 2011 Parisian retrospective. Far from an attempt to oppose madness and genius, this juxtaposition was on the contrary the occasion for a questioning of our gaze on these two phantasmatic poles of the human person.


The series devoted to slaughterhouses might seem distant from Trivier's other works. However, like the insane, slaughterhouses are part of those shameful images of a marginality that one does not want to see. It is a place rejected outside the city, far from gazes, far from men. There are moreover almost never men in these photographs.
Unlike Franju's film, Le Sang des bêtes, in 1949, Trivier is not interested in the gesture of work in slaughterhouses. He captures them empty, populated by corpses or animals blinded before being led to death. The photographer draws inspiration from Bacon's painting, whom he photographed in 1981, and from the latter's relationship to the body. We find all the English painter's pity for meat and animals in Trivier's series.


"J'ai toujours été très touché par les images relatives aux abattoirs et à la viande, et pour moi elles sont liées étroitement à tout ce qu'est la Crucifixion... C'est sûr, nous sommes de la viande, nous sommes des carcasses en puissance. Si je vais chez un boucher, je trouve toujours surprenant de ne pas être là, à la place de l'animal... " ["I have always been very moved by images relating to slaughterhouses and meat, and for me they are closely linked to everything that is the Crucifixion... It's certain, we are meat, we are potential carcasses. If I go to a butcher, I always find it surprising not to be there, in place of the animal..."] (Francis Bacon in Francis Bacon. Logique de la sensation, par Gilles Deleuze).


His photos show us the beasts as martyrs like Marsyas or Saint Peter. Trivier reveals the tragedy of the body dispossessed of presence, photographing blind, dead animals, dismembered and emptied of their entrails that black and white transforms into marble. But it is always man who is reflected in these portraits of soulless flesh, a man who, through Marc Trivier's silver mirror, projects himself into this blind flesh, and crosses for an instant the infinitesimal space of the gaze that separates them.


"Les vaches régulièrement photographiées par Marc Trivier à l'abattoir d'Anderlecht manifestent la même essence que ses visages humains." ["The cows regularly photographed by Marc Trivier at the Anderlecht slaughterhouse manifest the same essence as his human faces."] (Henri Van Lier « Le timbre photonique, Robert Frank et Marc Trivier », in les cahiers de la photographie 1992)

Large original black and white photograph by Marc Trivier.
Original gelatin silver print unsigned, as with most of Trivier's works.
A precious original gelatin silver print by the celebrated Belgian photographer, one of the most secretive contemporary artists who, despite early international success, preferred to limit his production to preserve the coherence of his work. Marc Trivier does not make new prints of his earlier portraits, and the printing paper he used is no longer commercially available. The artist "makes his own prints on Ilford baryta paper, devoting several days of work to each one, with particular concentration on rendering the whites, in contrast with blacks of rare density. A Marc Trivier print resembles no other. When he agrees to exhibit them, he suspends them in stainless steel frames of his own making, allowing free rein to the life of the paper." (Xavier-Gilles, « Marc Trivier et la tragédie de la lumière » in Le Monde Libertaire, 2011). This "life of the paper" participates in the work in the same way as the various alterations that photographs undergo when they are exhibited: "Dans les boites, les tirages gondolent, mais qu'importe : le photographe affectionne ce genre d'accident." ["In the boxes, the prints warp, but what does it matter: the photographer is fond of this kind of accident."] (Claire Guillot, « Les face à face sans échappatoire du photographe Marc Trivier », Le Monde, 2011). Marc Trivier has a particular sensitivity to the material aspect of his productions. While photography is essentially multiple in nature, this intervention by the artist in the entire creative process confers an autographic aura to these prints.


Photographs of artists, madmen, trees or slaughterhouses, Marc Trivier approaches all these subjects with a gaze as precise as it is intense.


"Dans sa cosmogonie, chaque chose, chaque être, végétal, animal ou humain, mérite le même respect. Car tous sont confrontés à la même loi d'airain : la solitude." ["In his cosmogony, every thing, every being, plant, animal or human, deserves the same respect. For all are confronted with the same iron law: solitude."] (Luc Desbenoit).


The beauty that emanates from his photos comes from this nakedness. There are no retouches, no reframings. We find in his work the same square format emphasized by the square of the negative that Trivier leaves on his prints. This frame traps our gaze in photographs where the artifice of color is rejected for an incisive black and white. With all artificiality having disappeared, we do not face the staging of a subject but a presence intensified by the radiating and singular light, witness to an instant of life and not of pose. It is this light, linked to the photographic medium, that unites Marc Trivier's series:


"Les photographies de Marc Trivier écrivent une tragédie de la lumière, celle-ci n'accueillant les êtres - hommes, arbres ou bêtes - qu'en les brûlant, avant disparition." ["Marc Trivier's photographs write a tragedy of light, which only welcomes beings - men, trees or beasts - by burning them, before disappearance."] (Xavier-Gilles in Le Monde Libertaire).


It is also this light, freed from all artifices, that gives his works the aura that makes them so present. This "burning" of light returns us to a real instant, to Barthes' "that-has-been" (La Chambre Claire, 1980):


"De trente-cinq ans de pratique photographique, d'obsessions, c'est peut-être ça qui reste : un mode d'enregistrement singulier de la brûlure de la lumière, décliné d'une image à l'autre, en une succession de propositions qui se ressemblent et pourtant chacune est aussi singulière que la fraction de temps auquel elle renvoie." ["From thirty-five years of photographic practice, of obsessions, this is perhaps what remains: a singular mode of recording the burning of light, declined from one image to another, in a succession of propositions that resemble each other and yet each is as singular as the fraction of time to which it refers."] (Marc Trivier).

"La photographie ne dit qu'une chose : « C'était. » On ne fixe que ce qui a été. S'il y a une tragédie, elle est là." ["Photography says only one thing: 'It was.' We only fix what has been. If there is a tragedy, it is there."] (Marc Trivier)



Warhol, Foucault, Beckett, Dubuffet... the greatest writers and artists have posed for Trivier. Simultaneously the artist is also interested in the margins of society, in what men do not want to see. He then photographs the insane and the slaughterhouses that he places alongside the celebrities. From the end of the 1980s his work is unanimously recognized and he receives the prestigious Young Photographer Award from the International Center of Photography in 1988 as well as the Prix Photographie Ouverte (Charleroi). After the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the Musée de l'Elysée in Lausanne and the Casino in Luxembourg, the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris devotes an important retrospective to him in 2011.
The photographs of the insane that Trivier made in the same period were deliberately mixed with those of the artists during the 2011 Parisian retrospective. Far from an attempt to oppose madness and genius, this juxtaposition was on the contrary the occasion for a questioning of our gaze on these two phantasmatic poles of the human person.


The series devoted to slaughterhouses might seem distant from Trivier's other works. However, like the insane, slaughterhouses are part of those shameful images of a marginality that one does not want to see. It is a place rejected outside the city, far from gazes, far from men. There are moreover almost never men in these photographs.
Unlike Franju's film, Le Sang des bêtes, in 1949, Trivier is not interested in the gesture of work in slaughterhouses. He captures them empty, populated by corpses or animals blinded before being led to death. The photographer draws inspiration from Bacon's painting, whom he photographed in 1981, and from the latter's relationship to the body. We find all the English painter's pity for meat and animals in Trivier's series.


"J'ai toujours été très touché par les images relatives aux abattoirs et à la viande, et pour moi elles sont liées étroitement à tout ce qu'est la Crucifixion... C'est sûr, nous sommes de la viande, nous sommes des carcasses en puissance. Si je vais chez un boucher, je trouve toujours surprenant de ne pas être là, à la place de l'animal... " ["I have always been very moved by images relating to slaughterhouses and meat, and for me they are closely linked to everything that is the Crucifixion... It's certain, we are meat, we are potential carcasses. If I go to a butcher, I always find it surprising not to be there, in place of the animal..."] (Francis Bacon in Francis Bacon. Logique de la sensation, par Gilles Deleuze).


His photos show us the beasts as martyrs like Marsyas or Saint Peter. Trivier reveals the tragedy of the body dispossessed of presence, photographing blind, dead animals, dismembered and emptied of their entrails that black and white transforms into marble. But it is always man who is reflected in these portraits of soulless flesh, a man who, through Marc Trivier's silver mirror, projects himself into this blind flesh, and crosses for an instant the infinitesimal space of the gaze that separates them.


"Les vaches régulièrement photographiées par Marc Trivier à l'abattoir d'Anderlecht manifestent la même essence que ses visages humains." ["The cows regularly photographed by Marc Trivier at the Anderlecht slaughterhouse manifest the same essence as his human faces."] (Henri Van Lier « Le timbre photonique, Robert Frank et Marc Trivier », in les cahiers de la photographie 1992)

Large original black and white photograph by Marc Trivier.
Original silver gelatin print unsigned, like most of Trivier's works.
Precious original silver gelatin proof by the celebrated Belgian photographer, one of the most secretive contemporary artists, who despite early international success, preferred to limit his production to preserve the coherence of his work. Marc Trivier does not print new copies of his old portraits, and the printing paper he used is no longer commercially available. The artist "makes his own prints on Ilford baryta paper, devoting several days of work to each one, with particular concentration on rendering the whites, in contrast with blacks of rare density. A Marc Trivier print resembles no other. When he agrees to exhibit them, he hangs them in stainless steel frames of his own making, giving free rein to the life of the paper." (Xavier-Gilles, « Marc Trivier et la tragédie de la lumière » in Le Monde Libertaire, 2011). This "life of the paper" participates in the work as much as the various alterations that photographs undergo when exposed: "In the boxes, the prints warp, but no matter: the photographer is fond of this kind of accident." (Claire Guillot, « Les face à face sans échappatoire du photographe Marc Trivier », Le Monde, 2011). Marc Trivier has a particular sensitivity for the material aspect of his productions. While photography is essentially multiple by nature, this intervention by the artist in the entire creative process confers an autographic aura to these prints.


Photographs of artists, madmen, trees or slaughterhouses, Marc Trivier approaches all these subjects with a gaze as precise as it is intense.


« Dans sa cosmogonie, chaque chose, chaque être, végétal, animal ou humain, mérite le même respect. Car tous sont confrontés à la même loi d'airain : la solitude. » ["In his cosmogony, every thing, every being, plant, animal or human, deserves the same respect. For all are confronted with the same iron law: solitude."] (Luc Desbenoit).


The beauty that emanates from his photos comes from this nakedness. There are no retouches, no reframings. We find in his work the same square format emphasized by the square of the negative that Trivier leaves on his prints. This frame traps our gaze in photographs where the artifice of color is rejected for an incisive black and white. All artificiality having disappeared, we do not face the staging of a subject but a presence exacerbated by irradiating and singular light, witness to an instant of life and not of pose. It is this light, linked to the photographic medium, that unites Marc Trivier's series:


« Les photographies de Marc Trivier écrivent une tragédie de la lumière, celle-ci n'accueillant les êtres - hommes, arbres ou bêtes - qu'en les brûlant, avant disparition." » ["Marc Trivier's photographs write a tragedy of light, which welcomes beings - men, trees or beasts - only by burning them, before disappearance."] (Xavier-Gilles in Le Monde Libertaire).


It is also this light, freed from all artifices, that gives his works the aura that makes them so present. This "burning" of light brings us back to a real instant, to Barthes' "that has been" (La Chambre Claire, 1980):


« De trente-cinq ans de pratique photographique, d'obsessions, c'est peut-être ça qui reste : un mode d'enregistrement singulier de la brûlure de la lumière, décliné d'une image à l'autre, en une succession de propositions qui se ressemblent et pourtant chacune est aussi singulière que la fraction de temps auquel elle renvoie. » ["From thirty-five years of photographic practice, of obsessions, perhaps this is what remains: a singular mode of recording the burning of light, declined from one image to another, in a succession of propositions that resemble each other and yet each is as singular as the fraction of time to which it refers."] (Marc Trivier).

« La photographie ne dit qu'une chose : « C'était. » On ne fixe que ce qui a été. S'il y a une tragédie, elle est là. » ["Photography says only one thing: 'It was.' We fix only what has been. If there is a tragedy, it is there."] (Marc Trivier)



Warhol, Foucault, Beckett, Dubuffet ... the greatest writers and artists have posed for Trivier. Simultaneously the artist is also interested in the margins of society, in what men do not want to see. He then photographs the insane and slaughterhouses that he places alongside celebrities. From the end of the 1980s his work is unanimously recognized and he receives the prestigious Young Photographer Award from the International Center of Photography in 1988 as well as the Prix Photographie Ouverte (Charleroi). After the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the Musée de l'Elysée in Lausanne and the Casino in Luxembourg, the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris devoted an important retrospective to him in 2011.
The photographs of the insane that Trivier made in the same period were deliberately mixed with those of artists during the 2011 Parisian retrospective. Far from an attempt to oppose madness and genius, this juxtaposition was instead the occasion for questioning our gaze on these two phantasmatic poles of the human person.


The series devoted to slaughterhouses might seem distant from Trivier's other works. However, like the insane, slaughterhouses are part of these shameful images of a marginality that one does not want to see. It is a place rejected outside the city, far from gazes, far from men. There are moreover almost never any men in these photographs.
Unlike Franju's film, Le Sang des bêtes, in 1949, Trivier is not interested in the gesture of work in slaughterhouses. He captures them empty, populated by corpses or animals blinded before being led to death. The photographer draws inspiration from Bacon's painting, whom he moreover photographed in 1981, and from the latter's relationship to the body. We find all the pity of the English painter for meat and animals in Trivier's series.


« J'ai toujours été très touché par les images relatives aux abattoirs et à la viande, et pour moi elles sont liées étroitement à tout ce qu'est la Crucifixion... C'est sûr, nous sommes de la viande, nous sommes des carcasses en puissance. Si je vais chez un boucher, je trouve toujours surprenant de ne pas être là, à la place de l'animal... » ["I have always been very touched by images relating to slaughterhouses and meat, and for me they are closely linked to all that is the Crucifixion... It's certain, we are meat, we are potential carcasses. If I go to a butcher's, I always find it surprising not to be there, in the animal's place..."] (Francis Bacon in Francis Bacon. Logique de la sensation , par Gilles Deleuze).


His photos show us beasts as martyrs like Marsyas or Saint Peter. Trivier unveils the tragedy of the body dispossessed of presence, photographing blind, dead, dismembered animals emptied of their entrails that black and white transforms into marble. But it is always man who is reflected in these portraits of flesh without souls, a man who, through Marc Trivier's silver mirror, projects himself into this blind flesh, and crosses for an instant the infinitesimal space of the gaze that separates them.


« Les vaches régulièrement photographiées par Marc Trivier à l'abattoir d'Anderlecht manifestent la même essence que ses visages humains.» ["The cows regularly photographed by Marc Trivier at the Anderlecht slaughterhouse manifest the same essence as his human faces."] (Henri Van Lier « Le timbre photonique, Robert Frank et Marc Trivier », in les cahiers de la photographie 1992)

Large original black and white photograph by Marc Trivier.
Original silver gelatin print unsigned, like most of Trivier's works.
Precious original silver gelatin proof by the celebrated Belgian photographer, one of the most secretive contemporary artists, who despite early international success, preferred to limit his production to preserve the coherence of his work. Marc Trivier does not print new copies of his old portraits, and the printing paper he used is no longer commercially available. The artist "makes his own prints on Ilford baryta paper, devoting several days of work to each one, with particular concentration on rendering the whites, in contrast with blacks of rare density. A Marc Trivier print resembles no other. When he agrees to exhibit them, he hangs them in stainless steel frames of his own making, giving free rein to the life of the paper." (Xavier-Gilles, « Marc Trivier et la tragédie de la lumière » in Le Monde Libertaire, 2011). This "life of the paper" participates in the work as much as the various alterations that photographs undergo when exposed: "In the boxes, the prints warp, but no matter: the photographer is fond of this kind of accident." (Claire Guillot, « Les face à face sans échappatoire du photographe Marc Trivier », Le Monde, 2011). Marc Trivier has a particular sensitivity for the material aspect of his productions. While photography is essentially multiple by nature, this intervention by the artist in the entire creative process confers an autographic aura to these prints.


Photographs of artists, madmen, trees or slaughterhouses, Marc Trivier approaches all these subjects with a gaze as precise as it is intense.


« Dans sa cosmogonie, chaque chose, chaque être, végétal, animal ou humain, mérite le même respect. Car tous sont confrontés à la même loi d'airain : la solitude. » ["In his cosmogony, every thing, every being, plant, animal or human, deserves the same respect. For all are confronted with the same iron law: solitude."] (Luc Desbenoit).


The beauty that emanates from his photos comes from this nakedness. There are no retouches, no reframings. We find in his work the same square format emphasized by the square of the negative that Trivier leaves on his prints. This frame traps our gaze in photographs where the artifice of color is rejected for an incisive black and white. All artificiality having disappeared, we do not face the staging of a subject but a presence exacerbated by irradiating and singular light, witness to an instant of life and not of pose. It is this light, linked to the photographic medium, that unites Marc Trivier's series:


« Les photographies de Marc Trivier écrivent une tragédie de la lumière, celle-ci n'accueillant les êtres - hommes, arbres ou bêtes - qu'en les brûlant, avant disparition." » ["Marc Trivier's photographs write a tragedy of light, which welcomes beings - men, trees or beasts - only by burning them, before disappearance."] (Xavier-Gilles in Le Monde Libertaire).


It is also this light, freed from all artifices, that gives his works the aura that makes them so present. This "burning" of light brings us back to a real instant, to Barthes' "that has been" (La Chambre Claire, 1980):


« De trente-cinq ans de pratique photographique, d'obsessions, c'est peut-être ça qui reste : un mode d'enregistrement singulier de la brûlure de la lumière, décliné d'une image à l'autre, en une succession de propositions qui se ressemblent et pourtant chacune est aussi singulière que la fraction de temps auquel elle renvoie. » ["From thirty-five years of photographic practice, of obsessions, perhaps this is what remains: a singular mode of recording the burning of light, declined from one image to another, in a succession of propositions that resemble each other and yet each is as singular as the fraction of time to which it refers."] (Marc Trivier).

« La photographie ne dit qu'une chose : « C'était. » On ne fixe que ce qui a été. S'il y a une tragédie, elle est là. » ["Photography says only one thing: 'It was.' We fix only what has been. If there is a tragedy, it is there."] (Marc Trivier)



Warhol, Foucault, Beckett, Dubuffet ... the greatest writers and artists have posed for Trivier. Simultaneously the artist is also interested in the margins of society, in what men do not want to see. He then photographs the insane and slaughterhouses that he places alongside celebrities. From the end of the 1980s his work is unanimously recognized and he receives the prestigious Young Photographer Award from the International Center of Photography in 1988 as well as the Prix Photographie Ouverte (Charleroi). After the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the Musée de l'Elysée in Lausanne and the Casino in Luxembourg, the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris devoted an important retrospective to him in 2011.
The photographs of the insane that Trivier made in the same period were deliberately mixed with those of artists during the 2011 Parisian retrospective. Far from an attempt to oppose madness and genius, this juxtaposition was instead the occasion for questioning our gaze on these two phantasmatic poles of the human person.


The series devoted to slaughterhouses might seem distant from Trivier's other works. However, like the insane, slaughterhouses are part of these shameful images of a marginality that one does not want to see. It is a place rejected outside the city, far from gazes, far from men. There are moreover almost never any men in these photographs.
Unlike Franju's film, Le Sang des bêtes, in 1949, Trivier is not interested in the gesture of work in slaughterhouses. He captures them empty, populated by corpses or animals blinded before being led to death. The photographer draws inspiration from Bacon's painting, whom he moreover photographed in 1981, and from the latter's relationship to the body. We find all the pity of the English painter for meat and animals in Trivier's series.


« J'ai toujours été très touché par les images relatives aux abattoirs et à la viande, et pour moi elles sont liées étroitement à tout ce qu'est la Crucifixion... C'est sûr, nous sommes de la viande, nous sommes des carcasses en puissance. Si je vais chez un boucher, je trouve toujours surprenant de ne pas être là, à la place de l'animal... » ["I have always been very touched by images relating to slaughterhouses and meat, and for me they are closely linked to all that is the Crucifixion... It's certain, we are meat, we are potential carcasses. If I go to a butcher's, I always find it surprising not to be there, in the animal's place..."] (Francis Bacon in Francis Bacon. Logique de la sensation , par Gilles Deleuze).


His photos show us beasts as martyrs like Marsyas or Saint Peter. Trivier unveils the tragedy of the body dispossessed of presence, photographing blind, dead, dismembered animals emptied of their entrails that black and white transforms into marble. But it is always man who is reflected in these portraits of flesh without souls, a man who, through Marc Trivier's silver mirror, projects himself into this blind flesh, and crosses for an instant the infinitesimal space of the gaze that separates them.


« Les vaches régulièrement photographiées par Marc Trivier à l'abattoir d'Anderlecht manifestent la même essence que ses visages humains.» ["The cows regularly photographed by Marc Trivier at the Anderlecht slaughterhouse manifest the same essence as his human faces."] (Henri Van Lier « Le timbre photonique, Robert Frank et Marc Trivier », in les cahiers de la photographie 1992)

Large original black and white photograph created by Marc Trivier.
Original silver gelatin print unsigned, like most of Trivier's works.
Irregular cutting on the right edge of the photograph.
Precious original silver gelatin print by the celebrated Belgian photographer, one of the most secretive contemporary artists, who despite early international success, preferred to limit his production to preserve the coherence of his work. Marc Trivier does not make new prints of his old portraits, and the printing paper he used is no longer commercially available. The artist "makes his own prints on Ilford baryta paper, devoting several days of work to each one, with particular concentration on rendering the whites, in contrast with blacks of rare density. A Marc Trivier print resembles no other. When he agrees to exhibit them, he suspends them in stainless steel frames of his own making, giving free rein to the life of the paper." (Xavier-Gilles, "Marc Trivier et la tragédie de la lumière" in Le Monde Libertaire, 2011). This "life of the paper" participates in the work just as much as the various alterations that photographs undergo when they are exhibited: "In the boxes, the prints buckle, but no matter: the photographer is fond of this kind of accident." (Claire Guillot, "Les face à face sans échappatoire du photographe Marc Trivier", Le Monde, 2011). Marc Trivier has a particular sensitivity for the material aspect of his productions. While photography is essentially about the multiple, this intervention by the artist throughout the entire creative process confers an autographic aura to these prints.


Photographs of artists, madmen, trees or slaughterhouses, Marc Trivier approaches all these subjects with a gaze as precise as it is intense.


"In his cosmogony, each thing, each being, plant, animal or human, deserves the same respect. For all are confronted with the same iron law: solitude." (Luc Desbenoit).


The beauty that emanates from his photos comes from this nakedness. There are neither retouches nor recroppings. We find in his work the same square format highlighted by the square of the negative that Trivier leaves on his prints. This frame traps our gaze in photographs where the artifice of color is rejected for an incisive black and white. With all artificiality having disappeared, we do not face the staging of a subject but a presence exacerbated by the radiating and singular light, witness to an instant of life and not of pose. It is this light, linked to the photographic medium, that unites Marc Trivier's series:


"Marc Trivier's photographs write a tragedy of light, which welcomes beings - men, trees or beasts - only by burning them, before disappearance." (Xavier-Gilles in Le Monde Libertaire).


It is also this light, freed from all artifices, that gives his works the aura that makes them so present. This "burning" of light brings us back to a real instant, to Barthes' "that-has-been" (La Chambre Claire, 1980):


"From thirty-five years of photographic practice, of obsessions, this is perhaps what remains: a singular mode of recording the burning of light, declined from one image to another, in a succession of propositions that resemble each other and yet each is as singular as the fraction of time to which it refers." (Marc Trivier).

"Photography says only one thing: 'It was.' One fixes only what has been. If there is a tragedy, it is there." (Marc Trivier)



Warhol, Foucault, Beckett, Dubuffet... the greatest writers and artists have posed for Trivier. Simultaneously the artist is also interested in the margins of society, in what men do not want to see. He then photographs the insane and the slaughterhouses which he places alongside the celebrities. From the end of the 1980s his work is unanimously recognized and he receives the prestigious Young Photographer Award from the International Center of Photography in 1988 as well as the Prix Photographie Ouverte (Charleroi). After the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the Musée de l'Elysée in Lausanne and the Casino in Luxembourg, the Maison Européenne de la photographie in Paris devoted an important retrospective to him in 2011.
The photographs of the insane that Trivier created in the same period were deliberately mixed with those of artists during the Parisian retrospective of 2011. Far from an attempt to oppose madness and genius, this juxtaposition was on the contrary the occasion for questioning our gaze on these two fantasmatic poles of the human person.


The series devoted to slaughterhouses might seem distant from Trivier's other works. However, like the insane, slaughterhouses form part of these shameful images of a marginality that one does not want to see. It is a place rejected outside the city, far from gazes, far from men. There are indeed almost never men in these photographs.
Contrary to Franju's film, Le Sang des bêtes, in 1949, Trivier is not interested in the gesture of work in slaughterhouses. He captures them empty, populated with corpses or animals blinded before being led to death. The photographer draws inspiration from Bacon's painting, whom he photographed in 1981, and from the latter's relationship to the body. We find all the pity of the English painter for meat and animals in Trivier's series.


"I have always been very touched by images relating to slaughterhouses and meat, and for me they are closely linked to all that the Crucifixion is... It's certain, we are meat, we are potential carcasses. If I go to a butcher's, I always find it surprising not to be there, in the animal's place..." (Francis Bacon in Francis Bacon. Logique de la sensation, by Gilles Deleuze).


His photos show us the beasts as martyrs like Marsyas or Saint Peter. Trivier reveals the tragedy of the body dispossessed of presence, photographing blind, dead, butchered animals emptied of their entrails that black and white transforms into marble. But it is always man who is reflected in these portraits of flesh without souls, a man who, through Marc Trivier's silver mirror, projects himself into this blind flesh, and crosses for an instant the infinitesimal space of the gaze that separates them.


"The cows regularly photographed by Marc Trivier at the Anderlecht slaughterhouse manifest the same essence as his human faces." (Henri Van Lier "Le timbre photonique, Robert Frank et Marc Trivier", in les cahiers de la photographie 1992)

Original black and white photograph created and printed by Marc Trivier.
Silver gelatin print unsigned, like most of Trivier's works. Unique proof printed by the artist.
Precious original silver gelatin print by the celebrated Belgian photographer, one of the most secretive contemporary artists, who despite early international success, preferred to limit his production to preserve the coherence of his work. Marc Trivier does not make new prints of his old portraits, and the printing paper he used is no longer commercially available. The artist "makes his own prints on Ilford baryta paper, devoting several days of work to each one, with particular concentration on rendering the whites, in contrast with blacks of rare density. A Marc Trivier print resembles no other. When he agrees to exhibit them, he suspends them in stainless steel frames of his own making, giving free rein to the life of the paper." (Xavier-Gilles, "Marc Trivier et la tragédie de la lumière" in Le Monde Libertaire, 2011). This "life of the paper" participates in the work just as much as the various alterations that photographs undergo when they are exhibited: "In the boxes, the prints buckle, but no matter: the photographer is fond of this kind of accident." (Claire Guillot, "Les face à face sans échappatoire du photographe Marc Trivier", Le Monde, 2011). Marc Trivier has a particular sensitivity for the material aspect of his productions. While photography is essentially about the multiple, this intervention by the artist throughout the entire creative process confers an autographic aura to these prints.

Photographs of artists, madmen, trees or slaughterhouses, Marc Trivier approaches all these subjects with a gaze as precise as it is intense.
"In his cosmogony, each thing, each being, plant, animal or human, deserves the same respect. For all are confronted with the same iron law: solitude." (Luc Desbenoit).
The beauty that emanates from his photos comes from this nakedness. There are neither retouches nor recroppings. We find in his work the same square format that traps our gaze in photographs where the artifice of color is rejected for an incisive black and white. With all artificiality having disappeared, we do not face the staging of a subject but a presence exacerbated by the radiating and singular light, witness to an instant of life and not of pose. It is this light, linked to Trivier's medium and which obsesses him, that gives his works the aura that makes them so present:
"From thirty-five years of photographic practice, of obsessions, this is perhaps what remains: a singular mode of recording the burning of light, declined from one image to another, in a succession of propositions that resemble each other and yet each is as singular as the fraction of time to which it refers." (Marc Trivier).

Warhol, Foucault, Beckett, Dubuffet... the greatest writers and artists have posed for Trivier. Simultaneously the artist is also interested in the margins of society, in what men do not want to see. He then photographs the insane and the slaughterhouses which he places alongside the celebrities. From the end of the 1980s his work is unanimously recognized and he receives the prestigious Young Photographer Award from the International Center of Photography in 1988 as well as the Prix Photographie Ouverte (Charleroi). After the Palais de Tokyo in Paris and the Musée de l'Elysée in Lausanne, the Casino in Luxembourg, the Maison Européenne de la photographie in Paris devoted an important retrospective to him in 2011.

Large original black and white photographic portrait created by Marc Trivier.
Original unsigned silver gelatin print, like most of Trivier's works.
Photo perforated at the level of the black square and slightly torn on the left edge.
Precious original silver gelatin proof by the celebrated Belgian photographer, one of the most secretive contemporary artists, who despite early international success, preferred to limit his production to preserve the coherence of his work. Marc Trivier does not print new copies of his old portraits, and the printing paper he used is no longer commercially available. The artist "makes his own prints on Ilford baryta paper, devoting several days of work to each, with particular concentration on rendering the whites, in contrast with blacks of rare density. A Marc Trivier print resembles no other. When he agrees to exhibit them, he suspends them in stainless steel frames of his own making, giving free rein to the life of the paper." (Xavier-Gilles, « Marc Trivier et la tragédie de la lumière » in Le Monde Libertaire, 2011). This "life of the paper" participates in the work in the same way as the various alterations that photographs undergo when they are exhibited: "In boxes, the prints warp, but no matter: the photographer is fond of this kind of accident." (Claire Guillot, « Les face à face sans échappatoire du photographe Marc Trivier », Le Monde, 2011). Marc Trivier has a particular sensitivity for the material aspect of his productions. While photography is essentially multiple by nature, this intervention by the artist in the entire creative process confers an autographic aura to these prints.


Photographs of artists, madmen, trees or slaughterhouses, Marc Trivier approaches all these subjects with a gaze as precise as it is intense.

"In his cosmogony, each thing, each being, plant, animal or human, deserves the same respect. For all are confronted with the same iron law: solitude." (Luc Desbenoit).

The beauty that emanates from his photos comes from this nakedness. There are no retouching, no cropping. We find in his work the same square format underlined by the square of the negative that Trivier leaves on his prints. This frame traps our gaze in photographs where the makeup of color is rejected for an incisive black and white. With all artificiality having disappeared, we do not face the staging of a subject but a presence exacerbated by the radiating and singular light, witness to an instant of life and not of pose. It is this light, linked to the photographic medium, that unites Marc Trivier's series:


"Marc Trivier's photographs write a tragedy of light, which welcomes beings - men, trees or beasts - only by burning them, before disappearance." (Xavier-Gilles in Le Monde Libertaire).

It is also this light, freed from all artifices, that gives his works the aura that makes them so present. This "burning" of light brings us back to a real instant, to Barthes' "that-has-been" (Camera Lucida, 1980):


"From thirty-five years of photographic practice, of obsessions, this is perhaps what remains: a singular mode of recording the burning of light, declined from one image to another, in a succession of propositions that resemble each other and yet each is as singular as the fraction of time to which it refers." (Marc Trivier).

"Photography says only one thing: 'It was.' We fix only what has been. If there is a tragedy, it is there." (Marc Trivier)


Warhol, Foucault, Beckett, Dubuffet ... the greatest writers and artists have posed for Trivier. Simultaneously the artist is also interested in the margins of society, in what men do not want to see. He then photographs the insane and slaughterhouses that he places alongside celebrities. From the end of the 1980s his work is unanimously recognized and he receives the prestigious Young Photographer Award from The International Center of Photography in 1988 as well as the Prix Photographie Ouverte (Charleroi). After the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the Musée de l'Elysée in Lausanne and the Casino in Luxembourg, the Maison Européenne de la photographie in Paris devoted an important retrospective to him in 2011.

The photographs of the insane that Trivier made during the same period were deliberately mixed with those of artists during the 2011 Parisian retrospective. Far from an attempt to oppose madness and genius, this juxtaposition was on the contrary an opportunity to question our gaze on these two phantasmatic poles of the human person.
While the photographs of doctors like those of Charcot in the nineteenth century emphasize the illness of patients and make them pose in ways that render their symptoms visible, those taken by Trivier do not seek to make the madman a simple witness to a pathology, nor even an "other," someone who would be characterized by his difference. As with his series on artists, Marc Trivier steps out of the system of posing which is an artifice to reach the humanity of his subjects. These men have a powerful gaze and a strong presence that contradicts their anonymity.
Like artists, whose mystery they seem to share, the "madmen" question our own presence.

Large original black and white photograph created and printed by Marc Trivier.
Unsigned silver gelatin print, like most of Trivier's works. Unique proof printed by the artist.

Precious original silver gelatin proof by the celebrated Belgian photographer, one of the most secretive contemporary artists, who despite early international success, preferred to limit his production to preserve the coherence of his work. Marc Trivier does not print new copies of his old portraits, and the printing paper he used is no longer commercially available. The artist "makes his own prints on Ilford baryta paper, devoting several days of work to each, with particular concentration on rendering the whites, in contrast with blacks of rare density. A Marc Trivier print resembles no other. When he agrees to exhibit them, he suspends them in stainless steel frames of his own making, giving free rein to the life of the paper." (Xavier-Gilles, « Marc Trivier et la tragédie de la lumière » in Le Monde Libertaire, 2011). This "life of the paper" participates in the work in the same way as the various alterations that photographs undergo when they are exhibited: "In boxes, the prints warp, but no matter: the photographer is fond of this kind of accident." (Claire Guillot, « Les face à face sans échappatoire du photographe Marc Trivier », Le Monde, 2011). Marc Trivier has a particular sensitivity for the material aspect of his productions. While photography is essentially multiple by nature, this intervention by the artist in the entire creative process confers an autographic aura to these prints.


Photographs of artists, madmen, trees or slaughterhouses, Marc Trivier approaches all these subjects with a gaze as precise as it is intense.

"In his cosmogony, each thing, each being, plant, animal or human, deserves the same respect. For all are confronted with the same iron law: solitude." (Luc Desbenoit).

The beauty that emanates from his photos comes from this nakedness. There are no retouching, no cropping. We find in his work the same square format underlined by the square of the negative that Trivier leaves on his prints. This frame traps our gaze in photographs where the makeup of color is rejected for an incisive black and white. With all artificiality having disappeared, we do not face the staging of a subject but a presence exacerbated by the radiating and singular light, witness to an instant of life and not of pose. It is this light, linked to the photographic medium, that unites Marc Trivier's series:


"Marc Trivier's photographs write a tragedy of light, which welcomes beings - men, trees or beasts - only by burning them, before disappearance." (Xavier-Gilles in Le Monde Libertaire).

It is also this light, freed from all artifices, that gives his works the aura that makes them so present. This "burning" of light brings us back to a real instant, to Barthes' "that-has-been" (Camera Lucida, 1980):


"From thirty-five years of photographic practice, of obsessions, this is perhaps what remains: a singular mode of recording the burning of light, declined from one image to another, in a succession of propositions that resemble each other and yet each is as singular as the fraction of time to which it refers." (Marc Trivier).

"Photography says only one thing: 'It was.' We fix only what has been. If there is a tragedy, it is there." (Marc Trivier)


Warhol, Foucault, Beckett, Dubuffet ... the greatest writers and artists have posed for Trivier. Simultaneously the artist is also interested in the margins of society, in what men do not want to see. He then photographs the insane and slaughterhouses that he places alongside celebrities. From the end of the 1980s his work is unanimously recognized and he receives the prestigious Young Photographer Award from The International Center of Photography in 1988 as well as the Prix Photographie Ouverte (Charleroi). After the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the Musée de l'Elysée in Lausanne and the Casino in Luxembourg, the Maison Européenne de la photographie in Paris devoted an important retrospective to him in 2011.

Original black and white photograph created and printed by Marc Trivier.
Unsigned gelatin silver print, like most of Trivier's works. Unique proof printed by the artist.

Precious original gelatin silver proof by the celebrated Belgian photographer, one of the most secretive contemporary artists, who despite early international success, preferred to limit his production to preserve the coherence of his work. Marc Trivier does not print new copies of his old portraits, and the printing paper he used is no longer commercially available. The artist "creates his own prints on Ilford baryta paper, devoting several days of work to each one, with particular concentration on rendering the whites, in contrast with blacks of rare density. A print by Marc Trivier resembles no other. When he agrees to exhibit them, he suspends them in stainless steel frames of his own making, giving free rein to the life of the paper." ["Marc Trivier et la tragédie de la lumière" ["Marc Trivier and the tragedy of light"] in Le Monde Libertaire, 2011]. This "vie du papier" ["life of the paper"] participates in the work in the same way as the various alterations that photographs undergo when they are exhibited: "Dans les boites, les tirages gondolent, mais qu'importe : le photographe affectionne ce genre d'accident." ["In the boxes, the prints warp, but what does it matter: the photographer is fond of this kind of accident."] (Claire Guillot, "Les face à face sans échappatoire du photographe Marc Trivier" ["The inescapable face-to-face encounters of photographer Marc Trivier"], Le Monde, 2011). Marc Trivier has a particular sensitivity for the material aspect of his productions. While photography is essentially multiple in nature, this intervention by the artist in the entire creative process confers an autographic aura to these prints.


Photographs of artists, madmen, trees or slaughterhouses, Marc Trivier approaches all these subjects with a gaze as precise as it is intense.

"Dans sa cosmogonie, chaque chose, chaque être, végétal, animal ou humain, mérite le même respect. Car tous sont confrontés à la même loi d'airain : la solitude." ["In his cosmogony, each thing, each being, plant, animal or human, deserves the same respect. For all are confronted with the same iron law: solitude."] (Luc Desbenoit).

The beauty that emanates from his photos comes from this nakedness. There are neither retouches nor reframings. We find in his work the same square format emphasized by the square of the negative that Trivier leaves on his prints. This frame traps our gaze in photographs where the artifice of color is rejected for an incisive black and white. With all artificiality having disappeared, we are not faced with the staging of a subject but with a presence exacerbated by the radiating and singular light, witness to a moment of life and not of pose. It is this light, linked to the photographic medium, that unites Marc Trivier's series:


"Les photographies de Marc Trivier écrivent une tragédie de la lumière, celle-ci n'accueillant les êtres - hommes, arbres ou bêtes - qu'en les brûlant, avant disparition." ["Marc Trivier's photographs write a tragedy of light, which welcomes beings - men, trees or beasts - only by burning them, before disappearance."] (Xavier-Gilles in Le Monde Libertaire).

It is also this light, freed from all artifices, that gives his works the aura that makes them so present. This "brûlure" ["burning"] of light refers us to a real moment, to Barthes' "ça a été" ["that has been"] (La Chambre Claire, 1980):


"De trente-cinq ans de pratique photographique, d'obsessions, c'est peut-être ça qui reste : un mode d'enregistrement singulier de la brûlure de la lumière, décliné d'une image à l'autre, en une succession de propositions qui se ressemblent et pourtant chacune est aussi singulière que la fraction de temps auquel elle renvoie." ["From thirty-five years of photographic practice, of obsessions, perhaps this is what remains: a singular mode of recording the burning of light, declined from one image to another, in a succession of propositions that resemble each other and yet each is as singular as the fraction of time to which it refers."] (Marc Trivier).

"La photographie ne dit qu'une chose : « C'était. » On ne fixe que ce qui a été. S'il y a une tragédie, elle est là." ["Photography says only one thing: 'It was.' We only fix what has been. If there is a tragedy, it is there."] (Marc Trivier)


Warhol, Foucault, Beckett, Dubuffet... the greatest writers and artists have posed for Trivier. Simultaneously the artist is also interested in the margins of society, in what men do not want to see. He then photographs the mentally ill and slaughterhouses which he places alongside celebrities. From the end of the 1980s his work is unanimously recognized and he receives the prestigious Young Photographer Award from the International Center of Photography in 1988 as well as the Prix Photographie Ouverte (Charleroi). After the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the Musée de l'Elysée in Lausanne and the Casino in Luxembourg, the Maison Européenne de la photographie in Paris devotes an important retrospective to him in 2011.

Original black and white photograph created and printed by Marc Trivier.
Unsigned gelatin silver print, like most of Trivier's works. Unique proof printed by the artist.
Upper edge cut irregularly.

Precious original gelatin silver proof by the celebrated Belgian photographer, one of the most secretive contemporary artists, who despite early international success, preferred to limit his production to preserve the coherence of his work. Marc Trivier does not print new copies of his old portraits, and the printing paper he used is no longer commercially available. The artist "creates his own prints on Ilford baryta paper, devoting several days of work to each one, with particular concentration on rendering the whites, in contrast with blacks of rare density. A print by Marc Trivier resembles no other. When he agrees to exhibit them, he suspends them in stainless steel frames of his own making, giving free rein to the life of the paper." ["Marc Trivier et la tragédie de la lumière" ["Marc Trivier and the tragedy of light"] in Le Monde Libertaire, 2011]. This "vie du papier" ["life of the paper"] participates in the work in the same way as the various alterations that photographs undergo when they are exhibited: "Dans les boites, les tirages gondolent, mais qu'importe : le photographe affectionne ce genre d'accident." ["In the boxes, the prints warp, but what does it matter: the photographer is fond of this kind of accident."] (Claire Guillot, "Les face à face sans échappatoire du photographe Marc Trivier" ["The inescapable face-to-face encounters of photographer Marc Trivier"], Le Monde, 2011). Marc Trivier has a particular sensitivity for the material aspect of his productions. While photography is essentially multiple in nature, this intervention by the artist in the entire creative process confers an autographic aura to these prints.


Photographs of artists, madmen, trees or slaughterhouses, Marc Trivier approaches all these subjects with a gaze as precise as it is intense.

"Dans sa cosmogonie, chaque chose, chaque être, végétal, animal ou humain, mérite le même respect. Car tous sont confrontés à la même loi d'airain : la solitude." ["In his cosmogony, each thing, each being, plant, animal or human, deserves the same respect. For all are confronted with the same iron law: solitude."] (Luc Desbenoit).

The beauty that emanates from his photos comes from this nakedness. There are neither retouches nor reframings. We find in his work the same square format emphasized by the square of the negative that Trivier leaves on his prints. This frame traps our gaze in photographs where the artifice of color is rejected for an incisive black and white. With all artificiality having disappeared, we are not faced with the staging of a subject but with a presence exacerbated by the radiating and singular light, witness to a moment of life and not of pose. It is this light, linked to the photographic medium, that unites Marc Trivier's series:


"Les photographies de Marc Trivier écrivent une tragédie de la lumière, celle-ci n'accueillant les êtres - hommes, arbres ou bêtes - qu'en les brûlant, avant disparition." ["Marc Trivier's photographs write a tragedy of light, which welcomes beings - men, trees or beasts - only by burning them, before disappearance."] (Xavier-Gilles in Le Monde Libertaire).

It is also this light, freed from all artifices, that gives his works the aura that makes them so present. This "brûlure" ["burning"] of light refers us to a real moment, to Barthes' "ça a été" ["that has been"] (La Chambre Claire, 1980):


"De trente-cinq ans de pratique photographique, d'obsessions, c'est peut-être ça qui reste : un mode d'enregistrement singulier de la brûlure de la lumière, décliné d'une image à l'autre, en une succession de propositions qui se ressemblent et pourtant chacune est aussi singulière que la fraction de temps auquel elle renvoie." ["From thirty-five years of photographic practice, of obsessions, perhaps this is what remains: a singular mode of recording the burning of light, declined from one image to another, in a succession of propositions that resemble each other and yet each is as singular as the fraction of time to which it refers."] (Marc Trivier).

"La photographie ne dit qu'une chose : « C'était. » On ne fixe que ce qui a été. S'il y a une tragédie, elle est là." ["Photography says only one thing: 'It was.' We only fix what has been. If there is a tragedy, it is there."] (Marc Trivier)


Warhol, Foucault, Beckett, Dubuffet... the greatest writers and artists have posed for Trivier. Simultaneously the artist is also interested in the margins of society, in what men do not want to see. He then photographs the mentally ill and slaughterhouses which he places alongside celebrities. From the end of the 1980s his work is unanimously recognized and he receives the prestigious Young Photographer Award from the International Center of Photography in 1988 as well as the Prix Photographie Ouverte (Charleroi). After the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the Musée de l'Elysée in Lausanne and the Casino in Luxembourg, the Maison Européenne de la photographie in Paris devotes an important retrospective to him in 2011.

Large original black and white photograph realized and printed by Marc Trivier.
Unsigned silver gelatin print, like most of Trivier's works. Unique proof printed by the artist.

Precious original silver gelatin print by the celebrated Belgian photographer, one of the most secretive contemporary artists, who despite early international success, preferred to limit his production to preserve the coherence of his work. Marc Trivier does not print new copies of his old portraits, and the printing paper he used is no longer commercially available. The artist "makes his own prints on Ilford baryta paper, devoting several days of work to each one, with particular concentration on rendering the whites, in contrast with blacks of rare density. A print by Marc Trivier resembles no other. When he agrees to exhibit them, he suspends them in stainless steel frames of his own making, giving free rein to the life of the paper." (Xavier-Gilles, "Marc Trivier et la tragédie de la lumière" in Le Monde Libertaire, 2011). This "life of the paper" participates in the work as much as the various alterations that photographs undergo when they are exhibited: "In boxes, the prints warp, but no matter: the photographer is fond of this kind of accident." (Claire Guillot, "Les face à face sans échappatoire du photographe Marc Trivier", Le Monde, 2011). Marc Trivier has a particular sensitivity for the material aspect of his productions. While photography is essentially about multiples, this intervention by the artist in the entire creative process confers an autographic aura to these prints.


Photographs of artists, madmen, trees or slaughterhouses, Marc Trivier approaches all these subjects with a gaze as precise as it is intense.

"In his cosmogony, each thing, each being, plant, animal or human, deserves the same respect. For all are confronted with the same iron law: solitude." (Luc Desbenoit).

The beauty that emanates from his photos comes from this nakedness. There are neither retouches nor reframings. We find in his work the same square format emphasized by the square of the negative that Trivier leaves on his prints. This frame traps our gaze in photographs where the artifice of color is rejected for an incisive black and white. All artificiality having disappeared, we do not face the staging of a subject but a presence exacerbated by the radiating and singular light, witness to an instant of life and not of pose. It is this light, linked to the photographic medium, that unites Marc Trivier's series:


"Marc Trivier's photographs write a tragedy of light, the latter welcoming beings - men, trees or beasts - only by burning them, before disappearance." (Xavier-Gilles in Le Monde Libertaire).

It is also this light, delivered from all artifices, that gives his works the aura that makes them so present. This "burning" of light refers us to a real instant, to Barthes' "that has been" (Camera Lucida, 1980):


"From thirty-five years of photographic practice, of obsessions, perhaps this is what remains: a singular mode of recording the burning of light, declined from one image to another, in a succession of propositions that resemble each other and yet each is as singular as the fraction of time to which it refers." (Marc Trivier).

"Photography says only one thing: 'It was.' One fixes only what has been. If there is a tragedy, it is there." (Marc Trivier)


Warhol, Foucault, Beckett, Dubuffet... the greatest writers and artists have posed for Trivier. Simultaneously the artist is equally interested in the margins of society, in what men do not want to see. He then photographs the insane and slaughterhouses that he places alongside celebrities. From the end of the 1980s his work is unanimously recognized and he receives the prestigious Young Photographer Award from the International Center of Photography in 1988 as well as the Prix Photographie Ouverte (Charleroi). After the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the Musée de l'Elysée in Lausanne and the Casino in Luxembourg, the Maison Européenne de la photographie in Paris devoted an important retrospective to him in 2011.

Large original black and white photographic portrait of the 2019 Nobel Prize in Literature winner by Marc Trivier.
Original unsigned silver gelatin print, like most of Trivier's works.
Precious original silver gelatin print by the famous Belgian photographer, one of the most secretive contemporary artists, who despite early international success, preferred to limit his production to preserve the coherence of his work. Marc Trivier does not make new prints of his old portraits, and the printing paper he used is no longer commercially available. The artist "makes his own prints on Ilford baryta paper, devoting several days of work to each one, with particular concentration on rendering the whites, in contrast with blacks of rare density. A Marc Trivier print resembles no other. When he agrees to exhibit them, he suspends them in stainless steel frames of his own making, giving free rein to the life of the paper." (Xavier-Gilles, "Marc Trivier et la tragédie de la lumière" in Le Monde Libertaire, 2011). This "life of the paper" participates in the work in the same way as the various alterations that photographs undergo when they are exhibited: "In the boxes, the prints warp, but no matter: the photographer is fond of this kind of accident." (Claire Guillot, "Les face à face sans échappatoire du photographe Marc Trivier", Le Monde, 2011). Marc Trivier has a particular sensitivity for the material aspect of his productions. While photography is by essence multiple, this intervention by the artist in the entire creative process confers an autographic aura to these prints.


Photographs of artists, madmen, trees or slaughterhouses, Marc Trivier approaches all these subjects with a gaze as precise as it is intense.

"Dans sa cosmogonie, chaque chose, chaque être, végétal, animal ou humain, mérite le même respect. Car tous sont confrontés à la même loi d'airain : la solitude." ["In his cosmogony, each thing, each being, plant, animal or human, deserves the same respect. For all are confronted with the same iron law: solitude."] (Luc Desbenoit).

The beauty that emanates from his photos comes from this nakedness. There are neither retouches nor cropping. We find in his work the same square format emphasized by the square of the negative that Trivier leaves on his prints. This frame traps our gaze in photographs where the makeup of color is rejected for an incisive black and white. All artificiality having disappeared, we do not face the staging of a subject but a presence exacerbated by the radiating and singular light, witness to an instant of life and not of pose. It is this light, linked to the photographic medium, that unites Marc Trivier's series:

"Les photographies de Marc Trivier écrivent une tragédie de la lumière, celle-ci n'accueillant les êtres - hommes, arbres ou bêtes - qu'en les brûlant, avant disparition." ["Marc Trivier's photographs write a tragedy of light, which welcomes beings - men, trees or beasts - only by burning them, before disappearance."] (Xavier-Gilles in Le Monde Libertaire).

It is also this light, freed from all artifices, that gives his works the aura that makes them so present. This "burning" of light brings us back to a real instant, to Barthes' "that has been" (Camera Lucida, 1980):

"De trente-cinq ans de pratique photographique, d'obsessions, c'est peut-être ça qui reste : un mode d'enregistrement singulier de la brûlure de la lumière, décliné d'une image à l'autre, en une succession de propositions qui se ressemblent et pourtant chacune est aussi singulière que la fraction de temps auquel elle renvoie." ["From thirty-five years of photographic practice, of obsessions, perhaps this is what remains: a singular mode of recording the burning of light, declined from one image to another, in a succession of propositions that resemble each other and yet each is as singular as the fraction of time to which it refers."] (Marc Trivier).

"La photographie ne dit qu'une chose : « C'était. » On ne fixe que ce qui a été. S'il y a une tragédie, elle est là." ["Photography says only one thing: 'It was.' One fixes only what has been. If there is a tragedy, it is there."] (Marc Trivier)

Warhol, Foucault, Beckett, Dubuffet... the greatest writers and artists have posed for Trivier. Simultaneously the artist is also interested in the margins of society, in what men do not want to see. He then photographs the insane and the slaughterhouses that he places alongside the celebrities. From the end of the 1980s his work is unanimously recognized and he receives the prestigious Young Photographer Award from the International Center of Photography in 1988 as well as the Prix Photographie Ouverte (Charleroi). After the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the Musée de l'Elysée in Lausanne and the Casino in Luxembourg, the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris dedicates an important retrospective to him in 2011.



The photographs of the great personalities of his time that Marc Trivier creates do not seek to show the public image of these artists. Taken face-on, with a gaze directed toward the lens, they show us an image of intimacy:

"(...) au lieu d'être un portraitiste d'écrivains et d'artistes parmi tant d'autres, il se marginalise par son dispositif : sous prétexte de réglages, il fait attendre ses modèles, il les fait poser plusieurs minutes ce qui leur donne un air las. Il attend peut-être un comportement plus naturel. Et on se retrouve face à Francis Bacon en équilibre précaire, Samuel Beckett, Jean Dubuffet ou encore Michel Foucault plus ou moins tassés sur leur chaise. Des images intimes." ["(...) instead of being a portraitist of writers and artists among so many others, he marginalizes himself by his approach: under the pretext of adjustments, he makes his models wait, he makes them pose for several minutes which gives them a weary air. He perhaps awaits more natural behavior. And we find ourselves facing Francis Bacon in precarious balance, Samuel Beckett, Jean Dubuffet or even Michel Foucault more or less slumped in their chair. Intimate images."] (Sylvie Rousselle-Tellier, "Une image de fatigue chez Marc Trivier", Marges 2004).

Photographed in their personal universe, most often their bedroom, the subjects abandon themselves, no longer control their image. The imbalance that results reveals the fragilities of these strong personalities, and allows Trivier to restore the unity of the intimate body and the public work.

"Je lisais Genet ; pour moi Genet, c'était des lettres sur un livre. Et puis un jour j'ai vu son portrait, il y a eu comme une fracture. Comment était-il possible que ces signes soient aussi quelqu'un ? Faire un portrait, c'est ressouder le nom et le visage." ["I was reading Genet; for me Genet was letters on a book. And then one day I saw his portrait, there was like a fracture. How was it possible that these signs were also someone? Making a portrait is re-welding the name and the face."] (Marc Trivier).

More than a portrait, each photo is the testimony of an exchange between the subject and the artist, of an instant of real life. The presence of the photographer is perceptible in each of the portraits that Trivier creates:

"Ce qui m'intéressait, ce n'était pas de photographier simplement un corps ou un visage, mais cette situation particulière qui est quelqu'un en train de faire la photo de quelqu'un d'autre." ["What interested me was not simply photographing a body or a face, but this particular situation which is someone in the process of taking a photo of someone else."] (Marc Trivier).

Large original black and white photographic portrait by Marc Trivier.
Original unsigned gelatin silver print, like most of Trivier's works.
A precious original gelatin silver print by the celebrated Belgian photographer, one of the most secretive contemporary artists, who despite early international success, preferred to limit his production to preserve the coherence of his work. Marc Trivier does not print new copies of his old portraits, and the printing paper he used is no longer commercially available. The artist "produces his own prints on Ilford baryta paper, devoting several days of work to each one, with particular concentration on rendering the whites, in contrast with blacks of rare density. A print by Marc Trivier resembles no other. When he agrees to exhibit them, he suspends them in stainless steel frames of his own making, giving free rein to the life of the paper." (Xavier-Gilles, "Marc Trivier et la tragédie de la lumière" ["Marc Trivier and the tragedy of light"] in Le Monde Libertaire, 2011). This "life of the paper" ["vie du papier"] participates in the work just as much as the various alterations that photographs undergo when they are exhibited: "Dans les boites, les tirages gondolent, mais qu'importe : le photographe affectionne ce genre d'accident." ["In the boxes, the prints warp, but no matter: the photographer is fond of this kind of accident."] (Claire Guillot, "Les face à face sans échappatoire du photographe Marc Trivier" ["The inescapable face-to-face encounters of photographer Marc Trivier"], Le Monde, 2011). Marc Trivier has a particular sensitivity for the material aspect of his productions. While photography is essentially about multiples, this intervention by the artist in the entire creative process confers an autographic aura to these prints.


Photographs of artists, madmen, trees or slaughterhouses, Marc Trivier approaches all these subjects with a gaze as precise as it is intense.

"Dans sa cosmogonie, chaque chose, chaque être, végétal, animal ou humain, mérite le même respect. Car tous sont confrontés à la même loi d'airain : la solitude." ["In his cosmogony, each thing, each being, plant, animal or human, deserves the same respect. For all are confronted with the same iron law: solitude."] (Luc Desbenoit).

The beauty that emanates from his photos comes from this nakedness. There is neither retouching nor cropping. We find in his work the same square format emphasized by the square of the negative that Trivier leaves on his prints. This frame traps our gaze in photographs where the artifice of color is rejected for an incisive black and white. With all artificiality having disappeared, we do not face the staging of a subject but a presence exacerbated by radiating and singular light, witness to an instant of life and not of pose. It is this light, linked to the photographic medium, that unites Marc Trivier's series:

"Les photographies de Marc Trivier écrivent une tragédie de la lumière, celle-ci n'accueillant les êtres - hommes, arbres ou bêtes - qu'en les brûlant, avant disparition." ["Marc Trivier's photographs write a tragedy of light, welcoming beings - men, trees or beasts - only by burning them, before disappearing."] (Xavier-Gilles in Le Monde Libertaire).

It is also this light, freed from all artifices, that gives his works the aura that makes them so present. This "burning" ["brûlure"] of light brings us back to a real instant, to Barthes' "that-has-been" ["ça a été"] (La Chambre Claire, 1980):

"De trente-cinq ans de pratique photographique, d'obsessions, c'est peut-être ça qui reste : un mode d'enregistrement singulier de la brûlure de la lumière, décliné d'une image à l'autre, en une succession de propositions qui se ressemblent et pourtant chacune est aussi singulière que la fraction de temps auquel elle renvoie." ["From thirty-five years of photographic practice, of obsessions, this is perhaps what remains: a singular mode of recording the burning of light, declined from one image to another, in a succession of propositions that resemble each other and yet each is as singular as the fraction of time to which it refers."] (Marc Trivier).

"La photographie ne dit qu'une chose : « C'était. » On ne fixe que ce qui a été. S'il y a une tragédie, elle est là." ["Photography says only one thing: 'It was.' We fix only what has been. If there is a tragedy, it is there."] (Marc Trivier)

Warhol, Foucault, Beckett, Dubuffet ... the greatest writers and artists have posed for Trivier. Simultaneously the artist is also interested in the margins of society, in what men do not want to see. He then photographs the mentally ill and slaughterhouses which he places alongside celebrities. From the end of the 1980s his work is unanimously recognized and he receives the prestigious Young Photographer Award from The International Center of Photography in 1988 as well as the Prix Photographie Ouverte (Charleroi). After the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the Musée de l'Elysée in Lausanne and the Casino in Luxembourg, the Maison Européenne de la photographie in Paris dedicates an important retrospective to him in 2011.



The photographs of the great personalities of his time that Marc Trivier creates do not seek to show the public image of these artists. Taken head-on, with a gaze directed toward the lens, they show us an image of intimacy:

"(...) au lieu d'être un portraitiste d'écrivains et d'artistes parmi tant d'autres, il se marginalise par son dispositif : sous prétexte de réglages, il fait attendre ses modèles, il les fait poser plusieurs minutes ce qui leur donne un air las. Il attend peut-être un comportement plus naturel. Et on se retrouve face à Francis Bacon en équilibre précaire, Samuel Beckett, Jean Dubuffet ou encore Michel Foucault plus ou moins tassés sur leur chaise. Des images intimes." ["(...) instead of being a portraitist of writers and artists among so many others, he marginalizes himself through his approach: under the pretext of adjustments, he makes his models wait, he makes them pose for several minutes which gives them a weary air. Perhaps he waits for more natural behavior. And we find ourselves facing Francis Bacon in precarious balance, Samuel Beckett, Jean Dubuffet or Michel Foucault more or less slumped in their chair. Intimate images."] (Sylvie Rousselle-Tellier, "Une image de fatigue chez Marc Trivier" ["An image of fatigue in Marc Trivier"], Marges 2004).

Photographed in their personal universe, most often their bedroom, the subjects abandon themselves, no longer control their image. The resulting imbalance reveals the fragilities of these such strong personalities, and allows Trivier to restore the unity of the intimate body and the public work.

"Je lisais Genet ; pour moi Genet, c'était des lettres sur un livre. Et puis un jour j'ai vu son portrait, il y a eu comme une fracture. Comment était-il possible que ces signes soient aussi quelqu'un ? Faire un portrait, c'est ressouder le nom et le visage." ["I was reading Genet; for me Genet was letters on a book. And then one day I saw his portrait, there was like a fracture. How was it possible that these signs were also someone? Making a portrait means reuniting the name and the face."] (Marc Trivier).

More than a portrait, each photo is the testimony of an exchange between the subject and the artist, of an instant of real life. The photographer's presence is perceptible in each of the portraits that Trivier creates:

"Ce qui m'intéressait, ce n'était pas de photographier simplement un corps ou un visage, mais cette situation particulière qui est quelqu'un en train de faire la photo de quelqu'un d'autre." ["What interested me was not simply photographing a body or a face, but this particular situation which is someone taking a photo of someone else."] (Marc Trivier).

Large original black and white photographic portrait by Marc Trivier.
Original unsigned gelatin silver print, like most of Trivier's works.
A precious original gelatin silver print by the celebrated Belgian photographer, one of the most secretive contemporary artists, who despite early international success, preferred to limit his production to preserve the coherence of his work. Marc Trivier does not print new copies of his old portraits, and the printing paper he used is no longer commercially available. The artist "produces his own prints on Ilford baryta paper, devoting several days of work to each one, with particular concentration on rendering the whites, in contrast with blacks of rare density. A print by Marc Trivier resembles no other. When he agrees to exhibit them, he suspends them in stainless steel frames of his own making, giving free rein to the life of the paper." (Xavier-Gilles, "Marc Trivier et la tragédie de la lumière" ["Marc Trivier and the tragedy of light"] in Le Monde Libertaire, 2011). This "life of the paper" ["vie du papier"] participates in the work just as much as the various alterations that photographs undergo when they are exhibited: "Dans les boites, les tirages gondolent, mais qu'importe : le photographe affectionne ce genre d'accident." ["In the boxes, the prints warp, but no matter: the photographer is fond of this kind of accident."] (Claire Guillot, "Les face à face sans échappatoire du photographe Marc Trivier" ["The inescapable face-to-face encounters of photographer Marc Trivier"], Le Monde, 2011). Marc Trivier has a particular sensitivity for the material aspect of his productions. While photography is essentially about multiples, this intervention by the artist in the entire creative process confers an autographic aura to these prints.


Photographs of artists, madmen, trees or slaughterhouses, Marc Trivier approaches all these subjects with a gaze as precise as it is intense.

"Dans sa cosmogonie, chaque chose, chaque être, végétal, animal ou humain, mérite le même respect. Car tous sont confrontés à la même loi d'airain : la solitude." ["In his cosmogony, each thing, each being, plant, animal or human, deserves the same respect. For all are confronted with the same iron law: solitude."] (Luc Desbenoit).

The beauty that emanates from his photos comes from this nakedness. There is neither retouching nor cropping. We find in his work the same square format emphasized by the square of the negative that Trivier leaves on his prints. This frame traps our gaze in photographs where the artifice of color is rejected for an incisive black and white. With all artificiality having disappeared, we do not face the staging of a subject but a presence exacerbated by radiating and singular light, witness to an instant of life and not of pose. It is this light, linked to the photographic medium, that unites Marc Trivier's series:

"Les photographies de Marc Trivier écrivent une tragédie de la lumière, celle-ci n'accueillant les êtres - hommes, arbres ou bêtes - qu'en les brûlant, avant disparition." ["Marc Trivier's photographs write a tragedy of light, welcoming beings - men, trees or beasts - only by burning them, before disappearing."] (Xavier-Gilles in Le Monde Libertaire).

It is also this light, freed from all artifices, that gives his works the aura that makes them so present. This "burning" ["brûlure"] of light brings us back to a real instant, to Barthes' "that-has-been" ["ça a été"] (La Chambre Claire, 1980):

"De trente-cinq ans de pratique photographique, d'obsessions, c'est peut-être ça qui reste : un mode d'enregistrement singulier de la brûlure de la lumière, décliné d'une image à l'autre, en une succession de propositions qui se ressemblent et pourtant chacune est aussi singulière que la fraction de temps auquel elle renvoie." ["From thirty-five years of photographic practice, of obsessions, this is perhaps what remains: a singular mode of recording the burning of light, declined from one image to another, in a succession of propositions that resemble each other and yet each is as singular as the fraction of time to which it refers."] (Marc Trivier).

"La photographie ne dit qu'une chose : « C'était. » On ne fixe que ce qui a été. S'il y a une tragédie, elle est là." ["Photography says only one thing: 'It was.' We fix only what has been. If there is a tragedy, it is there."] (Marc Trivier)

Warhol, Foucault, Beckett, Dubuffet ... the greatest writers and artists have posed for Trivier. Simultaneously the artist is also interested in the margins of society, in what men do not want to see. He then photographs the mentally ill and slaughterhouses which he places alongside celebrities. From the end of the 1980s his work is unanimously recognized and he receives the prestigious Young Photographer Award from The International Center of Photography in 1988 as well as the Prix Photographie Ouverte (Charleroi). After the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the Musée de l'Elysée in Lausanne and the Casino in Luxembourg, the Maison Européenne de la photographie in Paris dedicates an important retrospective to him in 2011.



The photographs of the great personalities of his time that Marc Trivier creates do not seek to show the public image of these artists. Taken head-on, with a gaze directed toward the lens, they show us an image of intimacy:

"(...) au lieu d'être un portraitiste d'écrivains et d'artistes parmi tant d'autres, il se marginalise par son dispositif : sous prétexte de réglages, il fait attendre ses modèles, il les fait poser plusieurs minutes ce qui leur donne un air las. Il attend peut-être un comportement plus naturel. Et on se retrouve face à Francis Bacon en équilibre précaire, Samuel Beckett, Jean Dubuffet ou encore Michel Foucault plus ou moins tassés sur leur chaise. Des images intimes." ["(...) instead of being a portraitist of writers and artists among so many others, he marginalizes himself through his approach: under the pretext of adjustments, he makes his models wait, he makes them pose for several minutes which gives them a weary air. Perhaps he waits for more natural behavior. And we find ourselves facing Francis Bacon in precarious balance, Samuel Beckett, Jean Dubuffet or Michel Foucault more or less slumped in their chair. Intimate images."] (Sylvie Rousselle-Tellier, "Une image de fatigue chez Marc Trivier" ["An image of fatigue in Marc Trivier"], Marges 2004).

Photographed in their personal universe, most often their bedroom, the subjects abandon themselves, no longer control their image. The resulting imbalance reveals the fragilities of these such strong personalities, and allows Trivier to restore the unity of the intimate body and the public work.

"Je lisais Genet ; pour moi Genet, c'était des lettres sur un livre. Et puis un jour j'ai vu son portrait, il y a eu comme une fracture. Comment était-il possible que ces signes soient aussi quelqu'un ? Faire un portrait, c'est ressouder le nom et le visage." ["I was reading Genet; for me Genet was letters on a book. And then one day I saw his portrait, there was like a fracture. How was it possible that these signs were also someone? Making a portrait means reuniting the name and the face."] (Marc Trivier).

More than a portrait, each photo is the testimony of an exchange between the subject and the artist, of an instant of real life. The photographer's presence is perceptible in each of the portraits that Trivier creates:

"Ce qui m'intéressait, ce n'était pas de photographier simplement un corps ou un visage, mais cette situation particulière qui est quelqu'un en train de faire la photo de quelqu'un d'autre." ["What interested me was not simply photographing a body or a face, but this particular situation which is someone taking a photo of someone else."] (Marc Trivier).

Large original black and white photographic portrait by Marc Trivier.
Original unsigned silver gelatin print, like most of Trivier's works.
Precious original silver gelatin proof by the celebrated Belgian photographer, one of the most secretive contemporary artists, who despite early international success, preferred to limit his production to preserve the coherence of his work. Marc Trivier does not print new copies of his earlier portraits, and the printing paper he used is no longer commercially available. The artist "makes his own prints on Ilford baryta paper, devoting several days of work to each one, with particular concentration on rendering the whites, in contrast with blacks of rare density. A Marc Trivier print resembles no other. When he agrees to exhibit them, he suspends them in stainless steel frames of his own making, giving free rein to the life of the paper." (Xavier-Gilles, "Marc Trivier et la tragédie de la lumière" ["Marc Trivier and the tragedy of light"] in Le Monde Libertaire, 2011). This "life of the paper" participates in the work as much as the various alterations that photographs undergo when they are exhibited: "Dans les boites, les tirages gondolent, mais qu'importe : le photographe affectionne ce genre d'accident." ["In boxes, the prints warp, but no matter: the photographer is fond of this kind of accident."] (Claire Guillot, "Les face à face sans échappatoire du photographe Marc Trivier" ["The inescapable face-to-face encounters of photographer Marc Trivier"], Le Monde, 2011). Marc Trivier has a particular sensitivity for the material aspect of his productions. While photography is essentially about multiples, this intervention by the artist in the entire creative process confers an autographic aura to these prints.


Photographs of artists, madmen, trees or slaughterhouses, Marc Trivier approaches all these subjects with a gaze as precise as it is intense.

"Dans sa cosmogonie, chaque chose, chaque être, végétal, animal ou humain, mérite le même respect. Car tous sont confrontés à la même loi d'airain : la solitude." ["In his cosmogony, everything, every being, plant, animal or human, deserves the same respect. For all are confronted with the same iron law: solitude."] (Luc Desbenoit).

The beauty that emanates from his photos comes from this nakedness. There are no retouches, no reframings. We find in his work the same square format emphasized by the square of the negative that Trivier leaves on his prints. This frame traps our gaze in photographs where the makeup of color is rejected for an incisive black and white. All artificiality having disappeared, we are not faced with the staging of a subject but with a presence exacerbated by the radiating and singular light, witness to an instant of life and not of pose. It is this light, linked to the photographic medium, that unites Marc Trivier's series:

"Les photographies de Marc Trivier écrivent une tragédie de la lumière, celle-ci n'accueillant les êtres - hommes, arbres ou bêtes - qu'en les brûlant, avant disparition." ["Marc Trivier's photographs write a tragedy of light, which only welcomes beings - men, trees or beasts - by burning them, before disappearance."] (Xavier-Gilles in Le Monde Libertaire).

It is also this light, freed from all artifices, that gives his works the aura that makes them so present. This "burning" of light brings us back to a real instant, to Barthes's "that-has-been" (La Chambre Claire, 1980):

"De trente-cinq ans de pratique photographique, d'obsessions, c'est peut-être ça qui reste : un mode d'enregistrement singulier de la brûlure de la lumière, décliné d'une image à l'autre, en une succession de propositions qui se ressemblent et pourtant chacune est aussi singulière que la fraction de temps auquel elle renvoie." ["From thirty-five years of photographic practice, of obsessions, this is perhaps what remains: a singular mode of recording the burning of light, declined from one image to another, in a succession of propositions that resemble each other and yet each is as singular as the fraction of time to which it refers."] (Marc Trivier).

"La photographie ne dit qu'une chose : « C'était. » On ne fixe que ce qui a été. S'il y a une tragédie, elle est là." ["Photography says only one thing: 'It was.' We only fix what has been. If there is a tragedy, it is there."] (Marc Trivier)

Warhol, Foucault, Beckett, Dubuffet... the greatest writers and artists have posed for Trivier. Simultaneously the artist is also interested in the margins of society, in what men do not want to see. He then photographs the mentally ill and slaughterhouses which he places alongside celebrities. From the end of the 1980s his work is unanimously recognized and he receives the prestigious Young Photographer Award from the International Center of Photography in 1988 as well as the Prix Photographie Ouverte (Charleroi). After the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the musée de l'Elysée in Lausanne and the Casino in Luxembourg, the Maison Européenne de la photographie in Paris dedicates an important retrospective to him in 2011.



The photographs of the great personalities of his time that Marc Trivier creates do not seek to show the public image of these artists. Taken face-on, with a gaze directed toward the lens, they show us an image of intimacy:

"(...) au lieu d'être un portraitiste d'écrivains et d'artistes parmi tant d'autres, il se marginalise par son dispositif : sous prétexte de réglages, il fait attendre ses modèles, il les fait poser plusieurs minutes ce qui leur donne un air las. Il attend peut-être un comportement plus naturel. Et on se retrouve face à Francis Bacon en équilibre précaire, Samuel Beckett, Jean Dubuffet ou encore Michel Foucault plus ou moins tassés sur leur chaise. Des images intimes." ["(...) instead of being a portraitist of writers and artists among so many others, he marginalizes himself by his approach: under the pretext of adjustments, he makes his models wait, he makes them pose for several minutes which gives them a weary air. He perhaps awaits more natural behavior. And we find ourselves facing Francis Bacon in precarious balance, Samuel Beckett, Jean Dubuffet or Michel Foucault more or less slumped in their chair. Intimate images."] (Sylvie Rousselle-Tellier, "Une image de fatigue chez Marc Trivier" ["An image of fatigue in Marc Trivier"], Marges 2004).

Photographed in their personal universe, most often their bedroom, the subjects abandon themselves, no longer control their image. The resulting imbalance reveals the fragilities of these strong personalities, and allows Trivier to restore the unity of the intimate body and the public work.

"Je lisais Genet ; pour moi Genet, c'était des lettres sur un livre. Et puis un jour j'ai vu son portrait, il y a eu comme une fracture. Comment était-il possible que ces signes soient aussi quelqu'un ? Faire un portrait, c'est ressouder le nom et le visage." ["I was reading Genet; for me Genet was letters on a book. And then one day I saw his portrait, there was like a fracture. How was it possible that these signs were also someone? Making a portrait is reuniting the name and the face."] (Marc Trivier).

More than a portrait, each photo is the testimony of an exchange between the subject and the artist, of an instant of real life. The presence of the photographer is felt in each of the portraits that Trivier creates:

"Ce qui m'intéressait, ce n'était pas de photographier simplement un corps ou un visage, mais cette situation particulière qui est quelqu'un en train de faire la photo de quelqu'un d'autre." ["What interested me was not simply photographing a body or a face, but this particular situation which is someone in the process of taking a photo of someone else."] (Marc Trivier).

Large original black and white photographic portrait by Marc Trivier.
Original unsigned silver gelatin print, like most of Trivier's works.
Precious original silver gelatin proof by the celebrated Belgian photographer, one of the most secretive contemporary artists, who despite early international success, preferred to limit his production to preserve the coherence of his work. Marc Trivier does not print new copies of his earlier portraits, and the printing paper he used is no longer commercially available. The artist "makes his own prints on Ilford baryta paper, devoting several days of work to each one, with particular concentration on rendering the whites, in contrast with blacks of rare density. A Marc Trivier print resembles no other. When he agrees to exhibit them, he suspends them in stainless steel frames of his own making, giving free rein to the life of the paper." (Xavier-Gilles, "Marc Trivier et la tragédie de la lumière" ["Marc Trivier and the tragedy of light"] in Le Monde Libertaire, 2011). This "life of the paper" participates in the work as much as the various alterations that photographs undergo when they are exhibited: "Dans les boites, les tirages gondolent, mais qu'importe : le photographe affectionne ce genre d'accident." ["In boxes, the prints warp, but no matter: the photographer is fond of this kind of accident."] (Claire Guillot, "Les face à face sans échappatoire du photographe Marc Trivier" ["The inescapable face-to-face encounters of photographer Marc Trivier"], Le Monde, 2011). Marc Trivier has a particular sensitivity for the material aspect of his productions. While photography is essentially about multiples, this intervention by the artist in the entire creative process confers an autographic aura to these prints.


Photographs of artists, madmen, trees or slaughterhouses, Marc Trivier approaches all these subjects with a gaze as precise as it is intense.

"Dans sa cosmogonie, chaque chose, chaque être, végétal, animal ou humain, mérite le même respect. Car tous sont confrontés à la même loi d'airain : la solitude." ["In his cosmogony, everything, every being, plant, animal or human, deserves the same respect. For all are confronted with the same iron law: solitude."] (Luc Desbenoit).

The beauty that emanates from his photos comes from this nakedness. There are no retouches, no reframings. We find in his work the same square format emphasized by the square of the negative that Trivier leaves on his prints. This frame traps our gaze in photographs where the makeup of color is rejected for an incisive black and white. All artificiality having disappeared, we are not faced with the staging of a subject but with a presence exacerbated by the radiating and singular light, witness to an instant of life and not of pose. It is this light, linked to the photographic medium, that unites Marc Trivier's series:

"Les photographies de Marc Trivier écrivent une tragédie de la lumière, celle-ci n'accueillant les êtres - hommes, arbres ou bêtes - qu'en les brûlant, avant disparition." ["Marc Trivier's photographs write a tragedy of light, which only welcomes beings - men, trees or beasts - by burning them, before disappearance."] (Xavier-Gilles in Le Monde Libertaire).

It is also this light, freed from all artifices, that gives his works the aura that makes them so present. This "burning" of light brings us back to a real instant, to Barthes's "that-has-been" (La Chambre Claire, 1980):

"De trente-cinq ans de pratique photographique, d'obsessions, c'est peut-être ça qui reste : un mode d'enregistrement singulier de la brûlure de la lumière, décliné d'une image à l'autre, en une succession de propositions qui se ressemblent et pourtant chacune est aussi singulière que la fraction de temps auquel elle renvoie." ["From thirty-five years of photographic practice, of obsessions, this is perhaps what remains: a singular mode of recording the burning of light, declined from one image to another, in a succession of propositions that resemble each other and yet each is as singular as the fraction of time to which it refers."] (Marc Trivier).

"La photographie ne dit qu'une chose : « C'était. » On ne fixe que ce qui a été. S'il y a une tragédie, elle est là." ["Photography says only one thing: 'It was.' We only fix what has been. If there is a tragedy, it is there."] (Marc Trivier)

Warhol, Foucault, Beckett, Dubuffet... the greatest writers and artists have posed for Trivier. Simultaneously the artist is also interested in the margins of society, in what men do not want to see. He then photographs the mentally ill and slaughterhouses which he places alongside celebrities. From the end of the 1980s his work is unanimously recognized and he receives the prestigious Young Photographer Award from the International Center of Photography in 1988 as well as the Prix Photographie Ouverte (Charleroi). After the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the musée de l'Elysée in Lausanne and the Casino in Luxembourg, the Maison Européenne de la photographie in Paris dedicates an important retrospective to him in 2011.



The photographs of the great personalities of his time that Marc Trivier creates do not seek to show the public image of these artists. Taken face-on, with a gaze directed toward the lens, they show us an image of intimacy:

"(...) au lieu d'être un portraitiste d'écrivains et d'artistes parmi tant d'autres, il se marginalise par son dispositif : sous prétexte de réglages, il fait attendre ses modèles, il les fait poser plusieurs minutes ce qui leur donne un air las. Il attend peut-être un comportement plus naturel. Et on se retrouve face à Francis Bacon en équilibre précaire, Samuel Beckett, Jean Dubuffet ou encore Michel Foucault plus ou moins tassés sur leur chaise. Des images intimes." ["(...) instead of being a portraitist of writers and artists among so many others, he marginalizes himself by his approach: under the pretext of adjustments, he makes his models wait, he makes them pose for several minutes which gives them a weary air. He perhaps awaits more natural behavior. And we find ourselves facing Francis Bacon in precarious balance, Samuel Beckett, Jean Dubuffet or Michel Foucault more or less slumped in their chair. Intimate images."] (Sylvie Rousselle-Tellier, "Une image de fatigue chez Marc Trivier" ["An image of fatigue in Marc Trivier"], Marges 2004).

Photographed in their personal universe, most often their bedroom, the subjects abandon themselves, no longer control their image. The resulting imbalance reveals the fragilities of these strong personalities, and allows Trivier to restore the unity of the intimate body and the public work.

"Je lisais Genet ; pour moi Genet, c'était des lettres sur un livre. Et puis un jour j'ai vu son portrait, il y a eu comme une fracture. Comment était-il possible que ces signes soient aussi quelqu'un ? Faire un portrait, c'est ressouder le nom et le visage." ["I was reading Genet; for me Genet was letters on a book. And then one day I saw his portrait, there was like a fracture. How was it possible that these signs were also someone? Making a portrait is reuniting the name and the face."] (Marc Trivier).

More than a portrait, each photo is the testimony of an exchange between the subject and the artist, of an instant of real life. The presence of the photographer is felt in each of the portraits that Trivier creates:

"Ce qui m'intéressait, ce n'était pas de photographier simplement un corps ou un visage, mais cette situation particulière qui est quelqu'un en train de faire la photo de quelqu'un d'autre." ["What interested me was not simply photographing a body or a face, but this particular situation which is someone in the process of taking a photo of someone else."] (Marc Trivier).

The generation of abstract expressionists of which Willem de Kooning is part experienced great media coverage. The group is primarily known through its male figures, Pollock, Rothko, or Franz Kline. These painters play on their masculinity to put forward an action painting where the body enters the canvas. De Kooning does not hesitate, in the manner of Picasso, to have himself photographed shirtless in his studio or in full struggle with his canvas. However, Marc Trivier does not show him to us in this public image. He manages to circumvent it to show us a painter slumped in his chair, perhaps tired from the work accomplished, who emerges from the arena of painting that critic Rosenberg spoke of ("A un certain moment, les peintres américains [...] commencèrent à considérer la toile comme une arène dans laquelle agir, plutôt que comme un espace dans lequel reproduire, recréer, analyser ou "exprimer" un objet réel ou imaginaire. Ce qui devait passer sur la toile n'était pas une image, mais un fait, une action." ["At a certain moment, American painters [...] began to consider the canvas as an arena in which to act, rather than as a space in which to reproduce, recreate, analyze or 'express' a real or imaginary object. What was to pass on the canvas was not an image, but a fact, an action."] 1952).

Large original black and white photographic portrait by Marc Trivier.
Original unsigned gelatin silver print, as with most of Trivier's works.
Precious original gelatin silver proof by the celebrated Belgian photographer, one of the most secretive contemporary artists, who despite early international success, preferred to limit his production to preserve the coherence of his work. Marc Trivier does not print new copies of his earlier portraits, and the printing paper he used is no longer commercially available. The artist "makes his own prints on Ilford baryta paper, devoting several days of work to each, with particular concentration on rendering the whites, in contrast with blacks of rare density. A Marc Trivier print resembles no other. When he agrees to exhibit them, he suspends them in stainless steel frames of his own making, allowing free rein to the life of the paper." (Xavier-Gilles, "Marc Trivier et la tragédie de la lumière" in Le Monde Libertaire, 2011). This "life of the paper" participates in the work as much as the various alterations that photographs undergo when they are exposed: "In the boxes, the prints warp, but no matter: the photographer is fond of this kind of accident." (Claire Guillot, "Les face à face sans échappatoire du photographe Marc Trivier", Le Monde, 2011). Marc Trivier has a particular sensitivity to the material aspect of his productions. While photography is essentially about the multiple, this intervention by the artist in the entire creative process confers an autographic aura to these prints.


Photographs of artists, of madmen, of trees or of slaughterhouses, Marc Trivier approaches all these subjects with a gaze as precise as it is intense.

"In his cosmogony, each thing, each being, plant, animal or human, deserves the same respect. For all are confronted with the same iron law: solitude." (Luc Desbenoit).

The beauty that emanates from his photos comes from this nakedness. There are no retouching, no cropping. We find in his work the same square format emphasized by the square of the negative that Trivier leaves on his prints. This frame traps our gaze in photographs where the makeup of color is rejected for an incisive black and white. With all artificiality having disappeared we do not face the staging of a subject but a presence exacerbated by the radiating and singular light, witness to an instant of life and not of pose. It is this light, linked to the photographic medium, that unites Marc Trivier's series:

"Marc Trivier's photographs write a tragedy of light, which welcomes beings - men, trees or beasts - only by burning them, before disappearance." (Xavier-Gilles in Le Monde Libertaire).

It is also this light, delivered from all artifices, that gives his works the aura that makes them so present. This "burn" of light brings us back to a real instant, to Barthes's "that-has-been" (La Chambre Claire, 1980):

"From thirty-five years of photographic practice, of obsessions, this is perhaps what remains: a singular mode of recording the burn of light, declined from one image to another, in a succession of propositions that resemble each other and yet each is as singular as the fraction of time to which it refers." (Marc Trivier).

"Photography says only one thing: 'It was.' One fixes only what has been. If there is a tragedy, it is there." (Marc Trivier)

Warhol, Foucault, Beckett, Dubuffet... the greatest writers and artists have posed for Trivier. Simultaneously the artist is also interested in the margins of society, in what men do not want to see. He then photographs the insane and the slaughterhouses that he places opposite the celebrities. From the end of the 1980s his work is unanimously recognized and he receives the prestigious Young Photographer Award from the International Center of Photography in 1988 as well as the Prix Photographie Ouverte (Charleroi). After the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the Musée de l'Elysée in Lausanne and the Casino in Luxembourg, the Maison Européenne de la photographie in Paris devoted an important retrospective to him in 2011.



The photographs of the great personalities of his time that Marc Trivier creates do not seek to show the public image of these artists. Taken frontally, with a gaze directed toward the lens, they show us an image of intimacy:

"(...) instead of being a portraitist of writers and artists among so many others, he marginalizes himself through his approach: under the pretext of adjustments, he makes his models wait, he makes them pose for several minutes which gives them a weary air. He perhaps awaits more natural behavior. And we find ourselves facing Francis Bacon in precarious balance, Samuel Beckett, Jean Dubuffet or Michel Foucault more or less slumped in their chairs. Intimate images." (Sylvie Rousselle-Tellier, "Une image de fatigue chez Marc Trivier", Marges 2004).

Photographed in their personal universe, most often their bedroom, the subjects abandon themselves, no longer control their image. The imbalance that results reveals the fragilities of these such strong personalities, and allows Trivier to restore the unity of the intimate body and the public work.

"I was reading Genet; for me Genet was letters on a book. And then one day I saw his portrait, there was like a fracture. How was it possible that these signs were also someone? Making a portrait is welding back together the name and the face." (Marc Trivier).

More than a portrait, each photo is the testimony of an exchange between the subject and the artist, of an instant of real life. The presence of the photographer is perceptible in each of the portraits that Trivier creates:

"What interested me was not simply to photograph a body or a face, but this particular situation which is someone in the process of taking the photo of someone else." (Marc Trivier).

Large original black and white photographic portrait by Marc Trivier.
Original unsigned gelatin silver print, like most of Trivier's works.
Precious original gelatin silver print by the famous Belgian photographer, one of the most secretive contemporary artists, who despite early international success, preferred to limit his production to preserve the coherence of his work. Marc Trivier does not print new copies of his old portraits, and the printing paper he used is no longer commercially available. The artist "prints his own work on Ilford baryta paper, dedicating several days of work to each print, with particular concentration on rendering the whites, in contrast with blacks of rare density. A Marc Trivier print resembles no other. When he agrees to exhibit them, he hangs them in stainless steel frames of his own making, giving free rein to the life of the paper." (Xavier-Gilles, "Marc Trivier et la tragédie de la lumière" ["Marc Trivier and the tragedy of light"] in Le Monde Libertaire, 2011). This "life of the paper" participates in the work in the same way as the various alterations that photographs undergo when exposed: "In boxes, the prints warp, but no matter: the photographer is fond of this kind of accident." (Claire Guillot, "Les face à face sans échappatoire du photographe Marc Trivier" ["The inescapable face-to-face encounters of photographer Marc Trivier"], Le Monde, 2011). Marc Trivier has a particular sensitivity for the material aspect of his productions. While photography is essentially about multiples, this intervention by the artist throughout the creative process confers an autographic aura to these prints.


Photographs of artists, madmen, trees or slaughterhouses, Marc Trivier approaches all these subjects with a gaze as precise as it is intense.

"Dans sa cosmogonie, chaque chose, chaque être, végétal, animal ou humain, mérite le même respect. Car tous sont confrontés à la même loi d'airain : la solitude." ["In his cosmogony, each thing, each being, plant, animal or human, deserves the same respect. For all are confronted with the same iron law: solitude."] (Luc Desbenoit).

The beauty that emanates from his photos comes from this nakedness. There are no retouches, no reframings. We find in his work the same square format underlined by the square of the negative that Trivier leaves on his prints. This frame traps our gaze in photographs where the makeup of color is rejected for an incisive black and white. With all artificiality having disappeared, we do not face the staging of a subject but a presence exacerbated by the radiating and singular light, witness to a moment of life and not of pose. It is this light, linked to the photographic medium, that unites Marc Trivier's series:

"Les photographies de Marc Trivier écrivent une tragédie de la lumière, celle-ci n'accueillant les êtres - hommes, arbres ou bêtes - qu'en les brûlant, avant disparition." ["Marc Trivier's photographs write a tragedy of light, which welcomes beings - men, trees or beasts - only by burning them, before disappearance."] (Xavier-Gilles in Le Monde Libertaire).

It is also this light, freed from all artifices, that gives his works the aura that makes them so present. This "burning" of light brings us back to a real moment, to Barthes's "that has been" (La Chambre Claire, 1980):

"De trente-cinq ans de pratique photographique, d'obsessions, c'est peut-être ça qui reste : un mode d'enregistrement singulier de la brûlure de la lumière, décliné d'une image à l'autre, en une succession de propositions qui se ressemblent et pourtant chacune est aussi singulière que la fraction de temps auquel elle renvoie." ["From thirty-five years of photographic practice, of obsessions, perhaps this is what remains: a singular mode of recording the burning of light, declined from one image to another, in a succession of propositions that resemble each other and yet each is as singular as the fraction of time to which it refers."] (Marc Trivier).

"La photographie ne dit qu'une chose : « C'était. » On ne fixe que ce qui a été. S'il y a une tragédie, elle est là." ["Photography says only one thing: 'It was.' We fix only what has been. If there is a tragedy, it is there."] (Marc Trivier)

Warhol, Foucault, Beckett, Dubuffet... the greatest writers and artists have posed for Trivier. Simultaneously the artist is also interested in the margins of society, in what men do not want to see. He then photographs the alienated and slaughterhouses that he places alongside celebrities. From the end of the 1980s his work is unanimously recognized and he receives the prestigious Young Photographer Award from the International Center of Photography in 1988 as well as the Prix Photographie Ouverte (Charleroi). After the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the Musée de l'Elysée in Lausanne and the Casino in Luxembourg, the Maison Européenne de la photographie in Paris dedicates an important retrospective to him in 2011.



The photographs of the great personalities of his era that Marc Trivier creates do not seek to show the public image of these artists. Taken from the front, with a gaze directed toward the lens, they show us an image of intimacy:

"(...) au lieu d'être un portraitiste d'écrivains et d'artistes parmi tant d'autres, il se marginalise par son dispositif : sous prétexte de réglages, il fait attendre ses modèles, il les fait poser plusieurs minutes ce qui leur donne un air las. Il attend peut-être un comportement plus naturel. Et on se retrouve face à Francis Bacon en équilibre précaire, Samuel Beckett, Jean Dubuffet ou encore Michel Foucault plus ou moins tassés sur leur chaise. Des images intimes." ["(...) instead of being a portraitist of writers and artists among so many others, he marginalizes himself through his approach: under the pretext of adjustments, he makes his models wait, he makes them pose for several minutes which gives them a weary air. Perhaps he is waiting for more natural behavior. And we find ourselves face to face with Francis Bacon in precarious balance, Samuel Beckett, Jean Dubuffet or Michel Foucault more or less slumped in their chair. Intimate images."] (Sylvie Rousselle-Tellier, "Une image de fatigue chez Marc Trivier" ["An image of fatigue in Marc Trivier"], Marges 2004).

Photographed in their personal universe, most often their bedroom, the subjects abandon themselves, no longer control their image. The resulting imbalance reveals the fragilities of these strong personalities, and allows Trivier to restore the unity of the intimate body and the public work.

"Je lisais Genet ; pour moi Genet, c'était des lettres sur un livre. Et puis un jour j'ai vu son portrait, il y a eu comme une fracture. Comment était-il possible que ces signes soient aussi quelqu'un ? Faire un portrait, c'est ressouder le nom et le visage." ["I was reading Genet; for me Genet was letters on a book. And then one day I saw his portrait, there was like a fracture. How was it possible that these signs were also someone? Making a portrait means welding together the name and the face."] (Marc Trivier).

More than a portrait, each photo is the testimony of an exchange between the subject and the artist, of a moment of real life. The presence of the photographer is felt in each of the portraits that Trivier creates:

"Ce qui m'intéressait, ce n'était pas de photographier simplement un corps ou un visage, mais cette situation particulière qui est quelqu'un en train de faire la photo de quelqu'un d'autre." ["What interested me was not simply photographing a body or a face, but this particular situation which is someone taking a photo of someone else."] (Marc Trivier).

Large original black and white photographic portrait by Marc Trivier.
Original unsigned gelatin silver print, like most of Trivier's works.
Precious original gelatin silver print by the famous Belgian photographer, one of the most secretive contemporary artists, who despite early international success, preferred to limit his production to preserve the coherence of his work. Marc Trivier does not print new copies of his old portraits, and the printing paper he used is no longer commercially available. The artist "prints his own work on Ilford baryta paper, dedicating several days of work to each print, with particular concentration on rendering the whites, in contrast with blacks of rare density. A Marc Trivier print resembles no other. When he agrees to exhibit them, he hangs them in stainless steel frames of his own making, giving free rein to the life of the paper." (Xavier-Gilles, "Marc Trivier et la tragédie de la lumière" ["Marc Trivier and the tragedy of light"] in Le Monde Libertaire, 2011). This "life of the paper" participates in the work in the same way as the various alterations that photographs undergo when exposed: "In boxes, the prints warp, but no matter: the photographer is fond of this kind of accident." (Claire Guillot, "Les face à face sans échappatoire du photographe Marc Trivier" ["The inescapable face-to-face encounters of photographer Marc Trivier"], Le Monde, 2011). Marc Trivier has a particular sensitivity for the material aspect of his productions. While photography is essentially about multiples, this intervention by the artist throughout the creative process confers an autographic aura to these prints.


Photographs of artists, madmen, trees or slaughterhouses, Marc Trivier approaches all these subjects with a gaze as precise as it is intense.

"Dans sa cosmogonie, chaque chose, chaque être, végétal, animal ou humain, mérite le même respect. Car tous sont confrontés à la même loi d'airain : la solitude." ["In his cosmogony, each thing, each being, plant, animal or human, deserves the same respect. For all are confronted with the same iron law: solitude."] (Luc Desbenoit).

The beauty that emanates from his photos comes from this nakedness. There are no retouches, no reframings. We find in his work the same square format underlined by the square of the negative that Trivier leaves on his prints. This frame traps our gaze in photographs where the makeup of color is rejected for an incisive black and white. With all artificiality having disappeared, we do not face the staging of a subject but a presence exacerbated by the radiating and singular light, witness to a moment of life and not of pose. It is this light, linked to the photographic medium, that unites Marc Trivier's series:

"Les photographies de Marc Trivier écrivent une tragédie de la lumière, celle-ci n'accueillant les êtres - hommes, arbres ou bêtes - qu'en les brûlant, avant disparition." ["Marc Trivier's photographs write a tragedy of light, which welcomes beings - men, trees or beasts - only by burning them, before disappearance."] (Xavier-Gilles in Le Monde Libertaire).

It is also this light, freed from all artifices, that gives his works the aura that makes them so present. This "burning" of light brings us back to a real moment, to Barthes's "that has been" (La Chambre Claire, 1980):

"De trente-cinq ans de pratique photographique, d'obsessions, c'est peut-être ça qui reste : un mode d'enregistrement singulier de la brûlure de la lumière, décliné d'une image à l'autre, en une succession de propositions qui se ressemblent et pourtant chacune est aussi singulière que la fraction de temps auquel elle renvoie." ["From thirty-five years of photographic practice, of obsessions, perhaps this is what remains: a singular mode of recording the burning of light, declined from one image to another, in a succession of propositions that resemble each other and yet each is as singular as the fraction of time to which it refers."] (Marc Trivier).

"La photographie ne dit qu'une chose : « C'était. » On ne fixe que ce qui a été. S'il y a une tragédie, elle est là." ["Photography says only one thing: 'It was.' We fix only what has been. If there is a tragedy, it is there."] (Marc Trivier)

Warhol, Foucault, Beckett, Dubuffet... the greatest writers and artists have posed for Trivier. Simultaneously the artist is also interested in the margins of society, in what men do not want to see. He then photographs the alienated and slaughterhouses that he places alongside celebrities. From the end of the 1980s his work is unanimously recognized and he receives the prestigious Young Photographer Award from the International Center of Photography in 1988 as well as the Prix Photographie Ouverte (Charleroi). After the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the Musée de l'Elysée in Lausanne and the Casino in Luxembourg, the Maison Européenne de la photographie in Paris dedicates an important retrospective to him in 2011.



The photographs of the great personalities of his era that Marc Trivier creates do not seek to show the public image of these artists. Taken from the front, with a gaze directed toward the lens, they show us an image of intimacy:

"(...) au lieu d'être un portraitiste d'écrivains et d'artistes parmi tant d'autres, il se marginalise par son dispositif : sous prétexte de réglages, il fait attendre ses modèles, il les fait poser plusieurs minutes ce qui leur donne un air las. Il attend peut-être un comportement plus naturel. Et on se retrouve face à Francis Bacon en équilibre précaire, Samuel Beckett, Jean Dubuffet ou encore Michel Foucault plus ou moins tassés sur leur chaise. Des images intimes." ["(...) instead of being a portraitist of writers and artists among so many others, he marginalizes himself through his approach: under the pretext of adjustments, he makes his models wait, he makes them pose for several minutes which gives them a weary air. Perhaps he is waiting for more natural behavior. And we find ourselves face to face with Francis Bacon in precarious balance, Samuel Beckett, Jean Dubuffet or Michel Foucault more or less slumped in their chair. Intimate images."] (Sylvie Rousselle-Tellier, "Une image de fatigue chez Marc Trivier" ["An image of fatigue in Marc Trivier"], Marges 2004).

Photographed in their personal universe, most often their bedroom, the subjects abandon themselves, no longer control their image. The resulting imbalance reveals the fragilities of these strong personalities, and allows Trivier to restore the unity of the intimate body and the public work.

"Je lisais Genet ; pour moi Genet, c'était des lettres sur un livre. Et puis un jour j'ai vu son portrait, il y a eu comme une fracture. Comment était-il possible que ces signes soient aussi quelqu'un ? Faire un portrait, c'est ressouder le nom et le visage." ["I was reading Genet; for me Genet was letters on a book. And then one day I saw his portrait, there was like a fracture. How was it possible that these signs were also someone? Making a portrait means welding together the name and the face."] (Marc Trivier).

More than a portrait, each photo is the testimony of an exchange between the subject and the artist, of a moment of real life. The presence of the photographer is felt in each of the portraits that Trivier creates:

"Ce qui m'intéressait, ce n'était pas de photographier simplement un corps ou un visage, mais cette situation particulière qui est quelqu'un en train de faire la photo de quelqu'un d'autre." ["What interested me was not simply photographing a body or a face, but this particular situation which is someone taking a photo of someone else."] (Marc Trivier).

Large original black and white photographic portrait by Marc Trivier.
Original unsigned silver gelatin print, as with most of Trivier's works.
Precious original silver gelatin print by the celebrated Belgian photographer, one of the most secretive contemporary artists, who despite early international success, preferred to limit his production to preserve the coherence of his work. Marc Trivier does not print new copies of his earlier portraits, and the printing paper he used is no longer commercially available. The artist "makes his own prints on Ilford baryta paper, devoting several days of work to each one, with particular concentration on rendering the whites, in contrast with blacks of rare density. A Marc Trivier print resembles no other. When he agrees to exhibit them, he suspends them in stainless steel frames of his own making, allowing free rein to the life of the paper." (Xavier-Gilles, "Marc Trivier et la tragédie de la lumière" in Le Monde Libertaire, 2011). This "life of the paper" participates in the work as much as the various alterations that photographs undergo when exposed: "In boxes, the prints warp, but no matter: the photographer is fond of this kind of accident." (Claire Guillot, "Les face à face sans échappatoire du photographe Marc Trivier," Le Monde, 2011). Marc Trivier has a particular sensitivity for the material aspect of his productions. While photography is essentially about the multiple, this intervention by the artist in the entire creative process confers an autographic aura to these prints.


Photographs of artists, madmen, trees or slaughterhouses, Marc Trivier approaches all these subjects with a gaze as precise as it is intense.

"In his cosmogony, each thing, each being, plant, animal or human, deserves the same respect. For all are confronted with the same iron law: solitude." (Luc Desbenoit).

The beauty that emanates from his photos comes from this nakedness. There are no retouching, no reframing. We find in his work the same square format emphasized by the square of the negative that Trivier leaves on his prints. This frame traps our gaze in photographs where the makeup of color is rejected for an incisive black and white. All artificiality having disappeared, we do not face the staging of a subject but a presence exacerbated by irradiating and singular light, witness to a moment of life and not of pose. It is this light, linked to the photographic medium, that unites Marc Trivier's series:

"Marc Trivier's photographs write a tragedy of light, the latter welcoming beings - men, trees or beasts - only by burning them, before disappearance." (Xavier-Gilles in Le Monde Libertaire).

It is also this light, delivered from all artifice, that gives his works the aura that makes them so present. This "burning" of light brings us back to a real instant, to Barthes' "that-has-been" (Camera Lucida, 1980):

"From thirty-five years of photographic practice, of obsessions, this is perhaps what remains: a singular mode of recording the burning of light, declined from one image to another, in a succession of propositions that resemble each other and yet each is as singular as the fraction of time to which it refers." (Marc Trivier).

"Photography says only one thing: 'It was.' One only fixes what has been. If there is a tragedy, it is there." (Marc Trivier)

Warhol, Foucault, Beckett, Dubuffet... the greatest writers and artists have posed for Trivier. Simultaneously the artist is also interested in the margins of society, in what men do not want to see. He then photographs the insane and slaughterhouses which he places alongside celebrities. From the end of the 1980s his work is unanimously recognized and he receives the prestigious Young Photographer Award from The International Center of Photography in 1988 as well as the Prix Photographie Ouverte (Charleroi). After the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the Musée de l'Elysée in Lausanne and the Casino in Luxembourg, the Maison Européenne de la photographie in Paris dedicated an important retrospective to him in 2011.



The photographs of the great personalities of his time that Marc Trivier creates do not seek to show the public image of these artists. Taken from the front, with a gaze directed toward the lens, they show us an image of intimacy:

"(...) instead of being a portraitist of writers and artists among so many others, he marginalizes himself through his approach: under the pretext of adjustments, he makes his models wait, he makes them pose for several minutes which gives them a weary air. He perhaps awaits more natural behavior. And we find ourselves facing Francis Bacon in precarious balance, Samuel Beckett, Jean Dubuffet or Michel Foucault more or less slumped in their chair. Intimate images." (Sylvie Rousselle-Tellier, "Une image de fatigue chez Marc Trivier," Marges 2004).

Photographed in their personal universe, most often their bedroom, the subjects abandon themselves, no longer control their image. The resulting imbalance reveals the fragilities of these strong personalities, and allows Trivier to restore the unity of the intimate body and the public work.

"I was reading Genet; for me Genet was letters on a book. And then one day I saw his portrait, there was like a fracture. How was it possible that these signs were also someone? To make a portrait is to weld together the name and the face." (Marc Trivier).

More than a portrait, each photo is the testimony of an exchange between the subject and the artist, of a moment of real life. The presence of the photographer is perceptible in each of the portraits that Trivier creates:

"What interested me was not simply to photograph a body or a face, but this particular situation which is someone in the process of taking a photo of someone else." (Marc Trivier).

Large original black and white photographic portrait by Marc Trivier.
Original unsigned silver gelatin print, like most of Trivier's works.
Precious original silver gelatin print by the celebrated Belgian photographer, one of the most secretive contemporary artists, who despite early international success, preferred to limit his production to preserve the coherence of his work. Marc Trivier does not make new prints of his old portraits, and the printing paper he used is no longer commercially available. The artist "makes his prints himself on Ilford baryta paper, devoting several days of work to each one, with particular concentration on rendering the whites, in contrast with blacks of rare density. A Marc Trivier print resembles no other. When he agrees to exhibit them, he suspends them in stainless steel frames of his own making, giving free rein to the life of the paper." (Xavier-Gilles, "Marc Trivier et la tragédie de la lumière" ["Marc Trivier and the tragedy of light"] in Le Monde Libertaire, 2011). This "life of the paper" ["vie du papier"] participates in the work in the same way as the various alterations that photographs undergo when they are exhibited: "Dans les boites, les tirages gondolent, mais qu'importe : le photographe affectionne ce genre d'accident." ["In the boxes, the prints buckle, but no matter: the photographer is fond of this kind of accident."] (Claire Guillot, "Les face à face sans échappatoire du photographe Marc Trivier" ["The inescapable face-to-face encounters of photographer Marc Trivier"], Le Monde, 2011). Marc Trivier has a particular sensitivity for the material aspect of his productions. While photography is essentially about multiples, this intervention by the artist in the entire creative process confers an autographic aura to these prints.


Photographs of artists, madmen, trees or slaughterhouses, Marc Trivier approaches all these subjects with a gaze as precise as it is intense.

"Dans sa cosmogonie, chaque chose, chaque être, végétal, animal ou humain, mérite le même respect. Car tous sont confrontés à la même loi d'airain : la solitude." ["In his cosmogony, each thing, each being, plant, animal or human, deserves the same respect. For all are confronted with the same iron law: solitude."] (Luc Desbenoit).

The beauty that emanates from his photos comes from this nakedness. There are no retouches, no cropping. We find in his work the same square format underlined by the square of the negative that Trivier leaves on his prints. This frame traps our gaze in photographs where the artifice of color is rejected for an incisive black and white. With all artificiality having disappeared, we are not facing the staging of a subject but a presence exacerbated by irradiating and singular light, witness to an instant of life and not of pose. It is this light, linked to the photographic medium, that unites Marc Trivier's series:

"Les photographies de Marc Trivier écrivent une tragédie de la lumière, celle-ci n'accueillant les êtres - hommes, arbres ou bêtes - qu'en les brûlant, avant disparition." ["Marc Trivier's photographs write a tragedy of light, which welcomes beings - men, trees or beasts - only by burning them, before disappearance."] (Xavier-Gilles in Le Monde Libertaire).

It is also this light, freed from all artifices, that gives his works the aura that makes them so present. This "burning" ["brûlure"] of light brings us back to a real instant, to Barthes's "ça a été" ["that-has-been"] (La Chambre Claire, 1980):

"De trente-cinq ans de pratique photographique, d'obsessions, c'est peut-être ça qui reste : un mode d'enregistrement singulier de la brûlure de la lumière, décliné d'une image à l'autre, en une succession de propositions qui se ressemblent et pourtant chacune est aussi singulière que la fraction de temps auquel elle renvoie." ["From thirty-five years of photographic practice, of obsessions, perhaps this is what remains: a singular mode of recording the burning of light, declined from one image to another, in a succession of propositions that resemble each other and yet each is as singular as the fraction of time to which it refers."] (Marc Trivier).

"La photographie ne dit qu'une chose : « C'était. » On ne fixe que ce qui a été. S'il y a une tragédie, elle est là." ["Photography says only one thing: 'It was.' One fixes only what has been. If there is a tragedy, it is there."] (Marc Trivier)

Warhol, Foucault, Beckett, Dubuffet... the greatest writers and artists have posed for Trivier. Simultaneously the artist is also interested in the margins of society, in what men do not want to see. He then photographs the insane and slaughterhouses which he places alongside celebrities. From the end of the 1980s his work is unanimously recognized and he receives the prestigious Young Photographer Award from the International Center of Photography in 1988 as well as the Prix Photographie Ouverte (Charleroi). After the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the Musée de l'Elysée in Lausanne and the Casino in Luxembourg, the Maison Européenne de la photographie in Paris dedicates an important retrospective to him in 2011.



The photographs of the great personalities of his time that Marc Trivier creates do not seek to show the public image of these artists. Taken head-on, with a gaze directed toward the lens, they show us an image of intimacy:

"(...) au lieu d'être un portraitiste d'écrivains et d'artistes parmi tant d'autres, il se marginalise par son dispositif : sous prétexte de réglages, il fait attendre ses modèles, il les fait poser plusieurs minutes ce qui leur donne un air las. Il attend peut-être un comportement plus naturel. Et on se retrouve face à Francis Bacon en équilibre précaire, Samuel Beckett, Jean Dubuffet ou encore Michel Foucault plus ou moins tassés sur leur chaise. Des images intimes." ["(...) instead of being a portraitist of writers and artists among so many others, he marginalizes himself through his approach: under the pretext of adjustments, he makes his models wait, he makes them pose for several minutes which gives them a weary air. Perhaps he awaits more natural behavior. And we find ourselves facing Francis Bacon in precarious balance, Samuel Beckett, Jean Dubuffet or Michel Foucault more or less slumped in their chair. Intimate images."] (Sylvie Rousselle-Tellier, "Une image de fatigue chez Marc Trivier" ["An image of fatigue in Marc Trivier"], Marges 2004).

Photographed in their personal universe, most often their bedroom, the subjects abandon themselves, no longer control their image. The resulting imbalance reveals the fragilities of these such strong personalities, and allows Trivier to restore the unity of the intimate body and the public work.

"Je lisais Genet ; pour moi Genet, c'était des lettres sur un livre. Et puis un jour j'ai vu son portrait, il y a eu comme une fracture. Comment était-il possible que ces signes soient aussi quelqu'un ? Faire un portrait, c'est ressouder le nom et le visage." ["I was reading Genet; for me Genet was letters on a book. And then one day I saw his portrait, there was like a fracture. How was it possible that these signs could also be someone? Making a portrait is soldering the name and the face back together."] (Marc Trivier).

More than a portrait, each photo is the testimony of an exchange between the subject and the artist, of an instant of real life. The photographer's presence is felt in each of the portraits that Trivier creates:

"Ce qui m'intéressait, ce n'était pas de photographier simplement un corps ou un visage, mais cette situation particulière qui est quelqu'un en train de faire la photo de quelqu'un d'autre." ["What interested me was not simply photographing a body or a face, but this particular situation which is someone in the process of taking a photo of someone else."] (Marc Trivier).

Large original black and white photographic portrait by Marc Trivier.
Original unsigned silver gelatin print, like most of Trivier's works.
Precious original silver gelatin print by the celebrated Belgian photographer, one of the most secretive contemporary artists, who despite early international success, preferred to limit his production to preserve the coherence of his work. Marc Trivier does not make new prints of his old portraits, and the printing paper he used is no longer commercially available. The artist "makes his prints himself on Ilford baryta paper, devoting several days of work to each one, with particular concentration on rendering the whites, in contrast with blacks of rare density. A Marc Trivier print resembles no other. When he agrees to exhibit them, he suspends them in stainless steel frames of his own making, giving free rein to the life of the paper." (Xavier-Gilles, "Marc Trivier et la tragédie de la lumière" ["Marc Trivier and the tragedy of light"] in Le Monde Libertaire, 2011). This "life of the paper" ["vie du papier"] participates in the work in the same way as the various alterations that photographs undergo when they are exhibited: "Dans les boites, les tirages gondolent, mais qu'importe : le photographe affectionne ce genre d'accident." ["In the boxes, the prints buckle, but no matter: the photographer is fond of this kind of accident."] (Claire Guillot, "Les face à face sans échappatoire du photographe Marc Trivier" ["The inescapable face-to-face encounters of photographer Marc Trivier"], Le Monde, 2011). Marc Trivier has a particular sensitivity for the material aspect of his productions. While photography is essentially about multiples, this intervention by the artist in the entire creative process confers an autographic aura to these prints.


Photographs of artists, madmen, trees or slaughterhouses, Marc Trivier approaches all these subjects with a gaze as precise as it is intense.

"Dans sa cosmogonie, chaque chose, chaque être, végétal, animal ou humain, mérite le même respect. Car tous sont confrontés à la même loi d'airain : la solitude." ["In his cosmogony, each thing, each being, plant, animal or human, deserves the same respect. For all are confronted with the same iron law: solitude."] (Luc Desbenoit).

The beauty that emanates from his photos comes from this nakedness. There are no retouches, no cropping. We find in his work the same square format underlined by the square of the negative that Trivier leaves on his prints. This frame traps our gaze in photographs where the artifice of color is rejected for an incisive black and white. With all artificiality having disappeared, we are not facing the staging of a subject but a presence exacerbated by irradiating and singular light, witness to an instant of life and not of pose. It is this light, linked to the photographic medium, that unites Marc Trivier's series:

"Les photographies de Marc Trivier écrivent une tragédie de la lumière, celle-ci n'accueillant les êtres - hommes, arbres ou bêtes - qu'en les brûlant, avant disparition." ["Marc Trivier's photographs write a tragedy of light, which welcomes beings - men, trees or beasts - only by burning them, before disappearance."] (Xavier-Gilles in Le Monde Libertaire).

It is also this light, freed from all artifices, that gives his works the aura that makes them so present. This "burning" ["brûlure"] of light brings us back to a real instant, to Barthes's "ça a été" ["that-has-been"] (La Chambre Claire, 1980):

"De trente-cinq ans de pratique photographique, d'obsessions, c'est peut-être ça qui reste : un mode d'enregistrement singulier de la brûlure de la lumière, décliné d'une image à l'autre, en une succession de propositions qui se ressemblent et pourtant chacune est aussi singulière que la fraction de temps auquel elle renvoie." ["From thirty-five years of photographic practice, of obsessions, perhaps this is what remains: a singular mode of recording the burning of light, declined from one image to another, in a succession of propositions that resemble each other and yet each is as singular as the fraction of time to which it refers."] (Marc Trivier).

"La photographie ne dit qu'une chose : « C'était. » On ne fixe que ce qui a été. S'il y a une tragédie, elle est là." ["Photography says only one thing: 'It was.' One fixes only what has been. If there is a tragedy, it is there."] (Marc Trivier)

Warhol, Foucault, Beckett, Dubuffet... the greatest writers and artists have posed for Trivier. Simultaneously the artist is also interested in the margins of society, in what men do not want to see. He then photographs the insane and slaughterhouses which he places alongside celebrities. From the end of the 1980s his work is unanimously recognized and he receives the prestigious Young Photographer Award from the International Center of Photography in 1988 as well as the Prix Photographie Ouverte (Charleroi). After the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the Musée de l'Elysée in Lausanne and the Casino in Luxembourg, the Maison Européenne de la photographie in Paris dedicates an important retrospective to him in 2011.



The photographs of the great personalities of his time that Marc Trivier creates do not seek to show the public image of these artists. Taken head-on, with a gaze directed toward the lens, they show us an image of intimacy:

"(...) au lieu d'être un portraitiste d'écrivains et d'artistes parmi tant d'autres, il se marginalise par son dispositif : sous prétexte de réglages, il fait attendre ses modèles, il les fait poser plusieurs minutes ce qui leur donne un air las. Il attend peut-être un comportement plus naturel. Et on se retrouve face à Francis Bacon en équilibre précaire, Samuel Beckett, Jean Dubuffet ou encore Michel Foucault plus ou moins tassés sur leur chaise. Des images intimes." ["(...) instead of being a portraitist of writers and artists among so many others, he marginalizes himself through his approach: under the pretext of adjustments, he makes his models wait, he makes them pose for several minutes which gives them a weary air. Perhaps he awaits more natural behavior. And we find ourselves facing Francis Bacon in precarious balance, Samuel Beckett, Jean Dubuffet or Michel Foucault more or less slumped in their chair. Intimate images."] (Sylvie Rousselle-Tellier, "Une image de fatigue chez Marc Trivier" ["An image of fatigue in Marc Trivier"], Marges 2004).

Photographed in their personal universe, most often their bedroom, the subjects abandon themselves, no longer control their image. The resulting imbalance reveals the fragilities of these such strong personalities, and allows Trivier to restore the unity of the intimate body and the public work.

"Je lisais Genet ; pour moi Genet, c'était des lettres sur un livre. Et puis un jour j'ai vu son portrait, il y a eu comme une fracture. Comment était-il possible que ces signes soient aussi quelqu'un ? Faire un portrait, c'est ressouder le nom et le visage." ["I was reading Genet; for me Genet was letters on a book. And then one day I saw his portrait, there was like a fracture. How was it possible that these signs could also be someone? Making a portrait is soldering the name and the face back together."] (Marc Trivier).

More than a portrait, each photo is the testimony of an exchange between the subject and the artist, of an instant of real life. The photographer's presence is felt in each of the portraits that Trivier creates:

"Ce qui m'intéressait, ce n'était pas de photographier simplement un corps ou un visage, mais cette situation particulière qui est quelqu'un en train de faire la photo de quelqu'un d'autre." ["What interested me was not simply photographing a body or a face, but this particular situation which is someone in the process of taking a photo of someone else."] (Marc Trivier).

Large original black and white photographic portrait by Marc Trivier.
Original unsigned gelatin silver print, like most of Trivier's works.
Precious original gelatin silver print by the celebrated Belgian photographer, one of the most secretive contemporary artists who, despite early international success, preferred to limit his production to preserve the coherence of his work. Marc Trivier does not print new copies of his earlier portraits; the printing paper he used is no longer commercially available. The artist "produces his own prints on Ilford baryta paper, devoting several days of work to each one, with particular concentration on rendering the whites, in contrast with blacks of rare density. A Marc Trivier print resembles no other. When he agrees to exhibit them, he suspends them in stainless steel frames of his own making, giving free rein to the life of the paper." (Xavier-Gilles, "Marc Trivier et la tragédie de la lumière" ["Marc Trivier and the tragedy of light"] in Le Monde Libertaire, 2011). This "life of the paper" participates in the work just as much as the various alterations that photographs undergo when they are exhibited: "Dans les boites, les tirages gondolent, mais qu'importe : le photographe affectionne ce genre d'accident." ["In the boxes, the prints warp, but no matter: the photographer is fond of this kind of accident."] (Claire Guillot, "Les face à face sans échappatoire du photographe Marc Trivier" ["The inescapable face-to-face encounters of photographer Marc Trivier"], Le Monde, 2011). Marc Trivier has a particular sensitivity for the material aspect of his productions. While photography is essentially multiple by nature, this intervention by the artist in the entire creative process confers an autographic aura to these prints.


Photographs of artists, madmen, trees or slaughterhouses, Marc Trivier approaches all these subjects with a gaze as precise as it is intense.

"Dans sa cosmogonie, chaque chose, chaque être, végétal, animal ou humain, mérite le même respect. Car tous sont confrontés à la même loi d'airain : la solitude." ["In his cosmogony, each thing, each being, plant, animal or human, deserves the same respect. For all are confronted with the same iron law: solitude."] (Luc Desbenoit).

The beauty that emanates from his photos comes from this nakedness. There are neither retouching nor cropping. We find in his work the same square format emphasized by the square of the negative that Trivier leaves on his prints. This frame traps our gaze in photographs where the artifice of color is rejected for an incisive black and white. With all artificiality having disappeared, we do not face the staging of a subject but a presence exacerbated by the radiating and singular light, witness to an instant of life and not of pose. It is this light, linked to the photographic medium, that unites Marc Trivier's series:

"Les photographies de Marc Trivier écrivent une tragédie de la lumière, celle-ci n'accueillant les êtres - hommes, arbres ou bêtes - qu'en les brûlant, avant disparition." ["Marc Trivier's photographs write a tragedy of light, which welcomes beings - men, trees or beasts - only by burning them, before disappearance."] (Xavier-Gilles in Le Monde Libertaire).

It is also this light, delivered from all artifices, that gives his works the aura that makes them so present. This "burn" of light brings us back to a real instant, to Barthes' "ça a été" ["that has been"] (La Chambre Claire, 1980):

"De trente-cinq ans de pratique photographique, d'obsessions, c'est peut-être ça qui reste : un mode d'enregistrement singulier de la brûlure de la lumière, décliné d'une image à l'autre, en une succession de propositions qui se ressemblent et pourtant chacune est aussi singulière que la fraction de temps auquel elle renvoie." ["From thirty-five years of photographic practice, of obsessions, perhaps this is what remains: a singular mode of recording the burn of light, declined from one image to another, in a succession of propositions that resemble each other and yet each is as singular as the fraction of time to which it refers."] (Marc Trivier).

"La photographie ne dit qu'une chose : « C'était. » On ne fixe que ce qui a été. S'il y a une tragédie, elle est là." ["Photography says only one thing: 'It was.' We fix only what has been. If there is a tragedy, it is there."] (Marc Trivier)

Warhol, Foucault, Beckett, Dubuffet... the greatest writers and artists have posed for Trivier. Simultaneously the artist is also interested in the margins of society, in what men do not want to see. He then photographs the alienated and the slaughterhouses that he places alongside the celebrities. From the end of the 1980s his work is unanimously recognized and he receives the prestigious Young Photographer Award from the International Center of Photography in 1988 as well as the Prix Photographie Ouverte (Charleroi). After the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the Musée de l'Elysée in Lausanne and the Casino in Luxembourg, the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris dedicated an important retrospective to him in 2011.



The photographs of the great personalities of his era that Marc Trivier creates do not seek to show the public image of these artists. Taken face-on, with a gaze directed toward the lens, they show us an image of intimacy:

"(...) au lieu d'être un portraitiste d'écrivains et d'artistes parmi tant d'autres, il se marginalise par son dispositif : sous prétexte de réglages, il fait attendre ses modèles, il les fait poser plusieurs minutes ce qui leur donne un air las. Il attend peut-être un comportement plus naturel. Et on se retrouve face à Francis Bacon en équilibre précaire, Samuel Beckett, Jean Dubuffet ou encore Michel Foucault plus ou moins tassés sur leur chaise. Des images intimes." ["(...) instead of being a portraitist of writers and artists among so many others, he marginalizes himself through his approach: under the pretext of adjustments, he makes his models wait, he makes them pose for several minutes which gives them a weary air. Perhaps he awaits more natural behavior. And we find ourselves facing Francis Bacon in precarious balance, Samuel Beckett, Jean Dubuffet or Michel Foucault more or less slumped in their chair. Intimate images."] (Sylvie Rousselle-Tellier, "Une image de fatigue chez Marc Trivier" ["An image of fatigue in Marc Trivier"], Marges 2004).

Photographed in their personal universe, most often their bedroom, the subjects abandon themselves, no longer control their image. The resulting imbalance reveals the fragilities of these strong personalities, and allows Trivier to restore the unity of the intimate body and the public work.

"Je lisais Genet ; pour moi Genet, c'était des lettres sur un livre. Et puis un jour j'ai vu son portrait, il y a eu comme une fracture. Comment était-il possible que ces signes soient aussi quelqu'un ? Faire un portrait, c'est ressouder le nom et le visage." ["I was reading Genet; for me Genet was letters on a book. And then one day I saw his portrait, there was like a fracture. How was it possible that these signs were also someone? Making a portrait is to rejoin the name and the face."] (Marc Trivier).

More than a portrait, each photo is the testimony of an exchange between the subject and the artist, of an instant of real life. The presence of the photographer is perceptible in each of the portraits that Trivier creates:

"Ce qui m'intéressait, ce n'était pas de photographier simplement un corps ou un visage, mais cette situation particulière qui est quelqu'un en train de faire la photo de quelqu'un d'autre." ["What interested me was not simply photographing a body or a face, but this particular situation which is someone in the process of taking a photo of someone else."] (Marc Trivier).

Large original black and white photographic portrait by Marc Trivier.
Original unsigned gelatin silver print, like most of Trivier's works.
Precious original gelatin silver print by the celebrated Belgian photographer, one of the most secretive contemporary artists who, despite early international success, preferred to limit his production to preserve the coherence of his work. Marc Trivier does not print new copies of his earlier portraits; the printing paper he used is no longer commercially available. The artist "produces his own prints on Ilford baryta paper, devoting several days of work to each one, with particular concentration on rendering the whites, in contrast with blacks of rare density. A Marc Trivier print resembles no other. When he agrees to exhibit them, he suspends them in stainless steel frames of his own making, giving free rein to the life of the paper." (Xavier-Gilles, "Marc Trivier et la tragédie de la lumière" ["Marc Trivier and the tragedy of light"] in Le Monde Libertaire, 2011). This "life of the paper" participates in the work just as much as the various alterations that photographs undergo when they are exhibited: "Dans les boites, les tirages gondolent, mais qu'importe : le photographe affectionne ce genre d'accident." ["In the boxes, the prints warp, but no matter: the photographer is fond of this kind of accident."] (Claire Guillot, "Les face à face sans échappatoire du photographe Marc Trivier" ["The inescapable face-to-face encounters of photographer Marc Trivier"], Le Monde, 2011). Marc Trivier has a particular sensitivity for the material aspect of his productions. While photography is essentially multiple by nature, this intervention by the artist in the entire creative process confers an autographic aura to these prints.


Photographs of artists, madmen, trees or slaughterhouses, Marc Trivier approaches all these subjects with a gaze as precise as it is intense.

"Dans sa cosmogonie, chaque chose, chaque être, végétal, animal ou humain, mérite le même respect. Car tous sont confrontés à la même loi d'airain : la solitude." ["In his cosmogony, each thing, each being, plant, animal or human, deserves the same respect. For all are confronted with the same iron law: solitude."] (Luc Desbenoit).

The beauty that emanates from his photos comes from this nakedness. There are neither retouching nor cropping. We find in his work the same square format emphasized by the square of the negative that Trivier leaves on his prints. This frame traps our gaze in photographs where the artifice of color is rejected for an incisive black and white. With all artificiality having disappeared, we do not face the staging of a subject but a presence exacerbated by the radiating and singular light, witness to an instant of life and not of pose. It is this light, linked to the photographic medium, that unites Marc Trivier's series:

"Les photographies de Marc Trivier écrivent une tragédie de la lumière, celle-ci n'accueillant les êtres - hommes, arbres ou bêtes - qu'en les brûlant, avant disparition." ["Marc Trivier's photographs write a tragedy of light, which welcomes beings - men, trees or beasts - only by burning them, before disappearance."] (Xavier-Gilles in Le Monde Libertaire).

It is also this light, delivered from all artifices, that gives his works the aura that makes them so present. This "burn" of light brings us back to a real instant, to Barthes' "ça a été" ["that has been"] (La Chambre Claire, 1980):

"De trente-cinq ans de pratique photographique, d'obsessions, c'est peut-être ça qui reste : un mode d'enregistrement singulier de la brûlure de la lumière, décliné d'une image à l'autre, en une succession de propositions qui se ressemblent et pourtant chacune est aussi singulière que la fraction de temps auquel elle renvoie." ["From thirty-five years of photographic practice, of obsessions, perhaps this is what remains: a singular mode of recording the burn of light, declined from one image to another, in a succession of propositions that resemble each other and yet each is as singular as the fraction of time to which it refers."] (Marc Trivier).

"La photographie ne dit qu'une chose : « C'était. » On ne fixe que ce qui a été. S'il y a une tragédie, elle est là." ["Photography says only one thing: 'It was.' We fix only what has been. If there is a tragedy, it is there."] (Marc Trivier)

Warhol, Foucault, Beckett, Dubuffet... the greatest writers and artists have posed for Trivier. Simultaneously the artist is also interested in the margins of society, in what men do not want to see. He then photographs the alienated and the slaughterhouses that he places alongside the celebrities. From the end of the 1980s his work is unanimously recognized and he receives the prestigious Young Photographer Award from the International Center of Photography in 1988 as well as the Prix Photographie Ouverte (Charleroi). After the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the Musée de l'Elysée in Lausanne and the Casino in Luxembourg, the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris dedicated an important retrospective to him in 2011.



The photographs of the great personalities of his era that Marc Trivier creates do not seek to show the public image of these artists. Taken face-on, with a gaze directed toward the lens, they show us an image of intimacy:

"(...) au lieu d'être un portraitiste d'écrivains et d'artistes parmi tant d'autres, il se marginalise par son dispositif : sous prétexte de réglages, il fait attendre ses modèles, il les fait poser plusieurs minutes ce qui leur donne un air las. Il attend peut-être un comportement plus naturel. Et on se retrouve face à Francis Bacon en équilibre précaire, Samuel Beckett, Jean Dubuffet ou encore Michel Foucault plus ou moins tassés sur leur chaise. Des images intimes." ["(...) instead of being a portraitist of writers and artists among so many others, he marginalizes himself through his approach: under the pretext of adjustments, he makes his models wait, he makes them pose for several minutes which gives them a weary air. Perhaps he awaits more natural behavior. And we find ourselves facing Francis Bacon in precarious balance, Samuel Beckett, Jean Dubuffet or Michel Foucault more or less slumped in their chair. Intimate images."] (Sylvie Rousselle-Tellier, "Une image de fatigue chez Marc Trivier" ["An image of fatigue in Marc Trivier"], Marges 2004).

Photographed in their personal universe, most often their bedroom, the subjects abandon themselves, no longer control their image. The resulting imbalance reveals the fragilities of these strong personalities, and allows Trivier to restore the unity of the intimate body and the public work.

"Je lisais Genet ; pour moi Genet, c'était des lettres sur un livre. Et puis un jour j'ai vu son portrait, il y a eu comme une fracture. Comment était-il possible que ces signes soient aussi quelqu'un ? Faire un portrait, c'est ressouder le nom et le visage." ["I was reading Genet; for me Genet was letters on a book. And then one day I saw his portrait, there was like a fracture. How was it possible that these signs were also someone? Making a portrait is to rejoin the name and the face."] (Marc Trivier).

More than a portrait, each photo is the testimony of an exchange between the subject and the artist, of an instant of real life. The presence of the photographer is perceptible in each of the portraits that Trivier creates:

"Ce qui m'intéressait, ce n'était pas de photographier simplement un corps ou un visage, mais cette situation particulière qui est quelqu'un en train de faire la photo de quelqu'un d'autre." ["What interested me was not simply photographing a body or a face, but this particular situation which is someone in the process of taking a photo of someone else."] (Marc Trivier).

Large original black and white photographic portrait by Marc Trivier.
Original unsigned gelatin silver print, like most of Trivier's works.
Precious original gelatin silver proof by the celebrated Belgian photographer, one of the most secretive contemporary artists, who despite early international success, preferred to limit his production to preserve the coherence of his work. Marc Trivier does not print new copies of his old portraits; the printing paper he used is no longer commercially available. The artist "makes his prints himself on Ilford baryta paper, devoting several days of work to each one, with particular concentration on rendering the whites, in contrast with blacks of rare density. A Marc Trivier print resembles no other. When he agrees to exhibit them, he suspends them in stainless steel frames of his own making, giving free rein to the life of the paper." (Xavier-Gilles, « Marc Trivier et la tragédie de la lumière » in Le Monde Libertaire, 2011). This "life of the paper" participates in the work as much as the various alterations that photographs undergo when they are exhibited: « Dans les boites, les tirages gondolent, mais qu'importe : le photographe affectionne ce genre d'accident. » ["In the boxes, the prints warp, but no matter: the photographer is fond of this kind of accident."] (Claire Guillot, « Les face à face sans échappatoire du photographe Marc Trivier », Le Monde, 2011). Marc Trivier has a particular sensitivity for the material aspect of his productions. While photography is essentially about multiples, this intervention by the artist in the entire creative process confers an autographic aura to these prints.


Photographs of artists, madmen, trees or slaughterhouses, Marc Trivier approaches all these subjects with a gaze as precise as it is intense.

« Dans sa cosmogonie, chaque chose, chaque être, végétal, animal ou humain, mérite le même respect. Car tous sont confrontés à la même loi d'airain : la solitude. » ["In his cosmogony, each thing, each being, plant, animal or human, deserves the same respect. For all are confronted with the same iron law: solitude."] (Luc Desbenoit).

The beauty that emanates from his photos comes from this nakedness. There are neither retouches nor reframings. We find in his work the same square format underlined by the square of the negative that Trivier leaves on his prints. This frame traps our gaze in photographs where the artifice of color is rejected for an incisive black and white. All artificiality having disappeared, we do not face the staging of a subject but a presence exacerbated by radiating and singular light, witness to an instant of life and not of pose. It is this light, linked to the photographic medium, that unites Marc Trivier's series:

« Les photographies de Marc Trivier écrivent une tragédie de la lumière, celle-ci n'accueillant les êtres - hommes, arbres ou bêtes - qu'en les brûlant, avant disparition. » ["Marc Trivier's photographs write a tragedy of light, which welcomes beings - men, trees or beasts - only by burning them, before disappearance."] (Xavier-Gilles in Le Monde Libertaire).

It is also this light, delivered from all artifices, that gives his works the aura that makes them so present. This "burning" of light refers us to a real instant, to Barthes' "that has been" (La Chambre Claire, 1980):

« De trente-cinq ans de pratique photographique, d'obsessions, c'est peut-être ça qui reste : un mode d'enregistrement singulier de la brûlure de la lumière, décliné d'une image à l'autre, en une succession de propositions qui se ressemblent et pourtant chacune est aussi singulière que la fraction de temps auquel elle renvoie. » ["From thirty-five years of photographic practice, of obsessions, perhaps this is what remains: a singular mode of recording the burning of light, declined from one image to another, in a succession of propositions that resemble each other and yet each is as singular as the fraction of time to which it refers."] (Marc Trivier).

« La photographie ne dit qu'une chose : « C'était. » On ne fixe que ce qui a été. S'il y a une tragédie, elle est là. » ["Photography says only one thing: 'It was.' One only fixes what has been. If there is a tragedy, it is there."] (Marc Trivier)

Warhol, Foucault, Beckett, Dubuffet... the greatest writers and artists have posed for Trivier. Simultaneously the artist is also interested in the margins of society, in what men do not want to see. He then photographs the mentally ill and slaughterhouses that he places alongside celebrities. From the end of the 1980s his work is unanimously recognized and he receives the prestigious Young Photographer Award from the International Center of Photography in 1988 as well as the Prix Photographie Ouverte (Charleroi). After the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the musée de l'Elysée in Lausanne and the Casino in Luxembourg, the Maison Européenne de la photographie in Paris dedicates an important retrospective to him in 2011.



The photographs of the great personalities of his time that Marc Trivier creates do not seek to show the public image of these artists. Taken face-on, with a gaze directed toward the lens, they show us an image of intimacy:

« (...) au lieu d'être un portraitiste d'écrivains et d'artistes parmi tant d'autres, il se marginalise par son dispositif : sous prétexte de réglages, il fait attendre ses modèles, il les fait poser plusieurs minutes ce qui leur donne un air las. Il attend peut-être un comportement plus naturel. Et on se retrouve face à Francis Bacon en équilibre précaire, Samuel Beckett, Jean Dubuffet ou encore Michel Foucault plus ou moins tassés sur leur chaise. Des images intimes. » ["(...) instead of being a portraitist of writers and artists among so many others, he marginalizes himself through his approach: under the pretext of adjustments, he makes his models wait, he makes them pose for several minutes which gives them a weary air. He perhaps awaits more natural behavior. And we find ourselves face to face with Francis Bacon in precarious balance, Samuel Beckett, Jean Dubuffet or Michel Foucault more or less slumped in their chair. Intimate images."] (Sylvie Rousselle-Tellier, « Une image de fatigue chez Marc Trivier », Marges 2004).

Photographed in their personal universe, most often their bedroom, the subjects abandon themselves, no longer control their image. The resulting imbalance reveals the fragilities of these strong personalities, and allows Trivier to restore the unity of the intimate body and the public work.

« Je lisais Genet ; pour moi Genet, c'était des lettres sur un livre. Et puis un jour j'ai vu son portrait, il y a eu comme une fracture. Comment était-il possible que ces signes soient aussi quelqu'un ? Faire un portrait, c'est ressouder le nom et le visage. » ["I was reading Genet; for me Genet was letters on a book. And then one day I saw his portrait, there was like a fracture. How was it possible that these signs were also someone? To make a portrait is to reunite the name and the face."] (Marc Trivier).

More than a portrait, each photo is the testimony of an exchange between the subject and the artist, of an instant of real life. The presence of the photographer is perceptible in each of the portraits that Trivier creates:

« Ce qui m'intéressait, ce n'était pas de photographier simplement un corps ou un visage, mais cette situation particulière qui est quelqu'un en train de faire la photo de quelqu'un d'autre. » ["What interested me was not simply photographing a body or a face, but this particular situation which is someone taking a photo of someone else."] (Marc Trivier).

Large original black and white photographic portrait by Marc Trivier.
Original unsigned gelatin silver print, like most of Trivier's works.
Precious original gelatin silver proof by the celebrated Belgian photographer, one of the most secretive contemporary artists, who despite early international success, preferred to limit his production to preserve the coherence of his work. Marc Trivier does not print new copies of his old portraits; the printing paper he used is no longer commercially available. The artist "makes his prints himself on Ilford baryta paper, devoting several days of work to each one, with particular concentration on rendering the whites, in contrast with blacks of rare density. A Marc Trivier print resembles no other. When he agrees to exhibit them, he suspends them in stainless steel frames of his own making, giving free rein to the life of the paper." (Xavier-Gilles, « Marc Trivier et la tragédie de la lumière » in Le Monde Libertaire, 2011). This "life of the paper" participates in the work as much as the various alterations that photographs undergo when they are exhibited: « Dans les boites, les tirages gondolent, mais qu'importe : le photographe affectionne ce genre d'accident. » ["In the boxes, the prints warp, but no matter: the photographer is fond of this kind of accident."] (Claire Guillot, « Les face à face sans échappatoire du photographe Marc Trivier », Le Monde, 2011). Marc Trivier has a particular sensitivity for the material aspect of his productions. While photography is essentially about multiples, this intervention by the artist in the entire creative process confers an autographic aura to these prints.


Photographs of artists, madmen, trees or slaughterhouses, Marc Trivier approaches all these subjects with a gaze as precise as it is intense.

« Dans sa cosmogonie, chaque chose, chaque être, végétal, animal ou humain, mérite le même respect. Car tous sont confrontés à la même loi d'airain : la solitude. » ["In his cosmogony, each thing, each being, plant, animal or human, deserves the same respect. For all are confronted with the same iron law: solitude."] (Luc Desbenoit).

The beauty that emanates from his photos comes from this nakedness. There are neither retouches nor reframings. We find in his work the same square format underlined by the square of the negative that Trivier leaves on his prints. This frame traps our gaze in photographs where the artifice of color is rejected for an incisive black and white. All artificiality having disappeared, we do not face the staging of a subject but a presence exacerbated by radiating and singular light, witness to an instant of life and not of pose. It is this light, linked to the photographic medium, that unites Marc Trivier's series:

« Les photographies de Marc Trivier écrivent une tragédie de la lumière, celle-ci n'accueillant les êtres - hommes, arbres ou bêtes - qu'en les brûlant, avant disparition. » ["Marc Trivier's photographs write a tragedy of light, which welcomes beings - men, trees or beasts - only by burning them, before disappearance."] (Xavier-Gilles in Le Monde Libertaire).

It is also this light, delivered from all artifices, that gives his works the aura that makes them so present. This "burning" of light refers us to a real instant, to Barthes' "that has been" (La Chambre Claire, 1980):

« De trente-cinq ans de pratique photographique, d'obsessions, c'est peut-être ça qui reste : un mode d'enregistrement singulier de la brûlure de la lumière, décliné d'une image à l'autre, en une succession de propositions qui se ressemblent et pourtant chacune est aussi singulière que la fraction de temps auquel elle renvoie. » ["From thirty-five years of photographic practice, of obsessions, perhaps this is what remains: a singular mode of recording the burning of light, declined from one image to another, in a succession of propositions that resemble each other and yet each is as singular as the fraction of time to which it refers."] (Marc Trivier).

« La photographie ne dit qu'une chose : « C'était. » On ne fixe que ce qui a été. S'il y a une tragédie, elle est là. » ["Photography says only one thing: 'It was.' One only fixes what has been. If there is a tragedy, it is there."] (Marc Trivier)

Warhol, Foucault, Beckett, Dubuffet... the greatest writers and artists have posed for Trivier. Simultaneously the artist is also interested in the margins of society, in what men do not want to see. He then photographs the mentally ill and slaughterhouses that he places alongside celebrities. From the end of the 1980s his work is unanimously recognized and he receives the prestigious Young Photographer Award from the International Center of Photography in 1988 as well as the Prix Photographie Ouverte (Charleroi). After the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the musée de l'Elysée in Lausanne and the Casino in Luxembourg, the Maison Européenne de la photographie in Paris dedicates an important retrospective to him in 2011.



The photographs of the great personalities of his time that Marc Trivier creates do not seek to show the public image of these artists. Taken face-on, with a gaze directed toward the lens, they show us an image of intimacy:

« (...) au lieu d'être un portraitiste d'écrivains et d'artistes parmi tant d'autres, il se marginalise par son dispositif : sous prétexte de réglages, il fait attendre ses modèles, il les fait poser plusieurs minutes ce qui leur donne un air las. Il attend peut-être un comportement plus naturel. Et on se retrouve face à Francis Bacon en équilibre précaire, Samuel Beckett, Jean Dubuffet ou encore Michel Foucault plus ou moins tassés sur leur chaise. Des images intimes. » ["(...) instead of being a portraitist of writers and artists among so many others, he marginalizes himself through his approach: under the pretext of adjustments, he makes his models wait, he makes them pose for several minutes which gives them a weary air. He perhaps awaits more natural behavior. And we find ourselves face to face with Francis Bacon in precarious balance, Samuel Beckett, Jean Dubuffet or Michel Foucault more or less slumped in their chair. Intimate images."] (Sylvie Rousselle-Tellier, « Une image de fatigue chez Marc Trivier », Marges 2004).

Photographed in their personal universe, most often their bedroom, the subjects abandon themselves, no longer control their image. The resulting imbalance reveals the fragilities of these strong personalities, and allows Trivier to restore the unity of the intimate body and the public work.

« Je lisais Genet ; pour moi Genet, c'était des lettres sur un livre. Et puis un jour j'ai vu son portrait, il y a eu comme une fracture. Comment était-il possible que ces signes soient aussi quelqu'un ? Faire un portrait, c'est ressouder le nom et le visage. » ["I was reading Genet; for me Genet was letters on a book. And then one day I saw his portrait, there was like a fracture. How was it possible that these signs were also someone? To make a portrait is to reunite the name and the face."] (Marc Trivier).

More than a portrait, each photo is the testimony of an exchange between the subject and the artist, of an instant of real life. The presence of the photographer is perceptible in each of the portraits that Trivier creates:

« Ce qui m'intéressait, ce n'était pas de photographier simplement un corps ou un visage, mais cette situation particulière qui est quelqu'un en train de faire la photo de quelqu'un d'autre. » ["What interested me was not simply photographing a body or a face, but this particular situation which is someone taking a photo of someone else."] (Marc Trivier).

FOUCAULT Michel Portrait of Michel Foucault. Original artist's photograph.

Large original photographic portrait in black and white by Marc Trivier.
Original unsigned silver print, like most of Trivier's works.
Small tear to upper edge.
A handsome original silver print proof by the famous Belgian photographer, one of the most secretive contemporary artists, who - despite early international success - preferred to limit his output to preserve the coherence of his oeuvre. Marc Trivier doesn't do after-prints of his old portraits, and in any case, the paper he used for printing is no longer sold. The artist "prints his images himself on Ilford baryta paper, devoting several days of work to each. He pays special attention to rendering the whites, contrasted with unusually dense blacks. A Marc Trivier print is like none other. When he does agree to exhibit his images, he suspends them in self-made stainless steel frames, giving the paper the freedom to live its life" (Xavier-Gilles, "Marc Trivier et la tragédie de la lumière [Marc Trivier and the Tragedy of Light]" in Le Monde Libertaire, 2011). This "life of the paper" participates in the work in the same way as the various changes that the photographs undergo when they're exhibited: "In the boxes, the prints buckle, but so what: it's the photographer who's giving rise to this sort of accident" (Claire Guillot, "Les face à face sans échappatoire du photographe Marc Trivier [The inescapable encounters of the photographer Marc Trivier], Le Monde, 2011). Marc Trivier has a particular sensibility for the material aspect of his work. Though photography essentially relies on the multiple, this intervention by the artist in the entire process of creation gives these prints an autobiographical air.
  

Whether photographing artists, mad people, trees, or abattoirs, Marc Trivier approaches all his subjects with a gaze that is as precise as it is intense.
 

"In his cosmogony, each thing, each being, whether plant, animal, or human, deserves the same respect. Because all are confronted by the same cast-iron law: solitude" (Luc Desbenoit).

The beauty that emanates from his photos comes from this nakedness. There is no retouching and no reframing. One finds throughout his oeuvre the same square format underlined by the squares of the negative that Trivier leaves on his images. This frame traps our gaze in the photographs where the artifice of color is rejected for a cutting black and white. All artificiality gone, we are faced not with the arrangement of a subject but a presence exacerbated by the radiant and singular light, testimony to a lived moment and not a pose. It is this light, tied to the photographic medium, that unites Marc Trivier's various series:

 

"Marc Trivier's photographs write a tragedy of light, which does not welcome beings - humans, trees, or animals - but rather burns them before disappearance" (Xavier-Gilles in Le Monde Libertaire).

It is also this tragedy of light, freed of all artifice, that gives his works the air that makes them so immediate. This "burning" of the light throws us back into a real moment, to the "that happened" of Barthes (Camera Lucida, 1980): 

 

"Of thirty-five years of photography, of various obsessions, perhaps this is what is left: a singular way of recording the burning of the light, carried through one image after another, in a succession of propositions that seem to resemble one another and yet each is just as singular as the fraction of the moment to which it refers" (Marc Trivier).

"Photography says only one thing: 'that happened.' You can only record what has been. If there is a tragedy to it, it is in this" (Marc Trivier)

Warhol, Foucault, Beckett, Dubuffet, etc.: the most famous writers and artists posed for Trivier. At the same time, the artist was just as interested in the margins of society, to what people did not wish to see. He therefore photographed the mentally challenged and abattoirs, images he then contrasted with celebrities. From the late '80s, his work has been unanimously acknowledged and he received the prestigious Young Photographer Award from the International Center of Photography in 1988, as well as the Prix Photographie Ouverte (Charleroi). After the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the Musée de l'Elysée in Lausanne, the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris also devoted an important retrospective to Trivier in 2011.
 
 

The photographs of the famous figures of his era that Trivier took do not seek to show the public face of these artists. Taken head-on and looking into the lens, they give us an image of intimacy:
 

"...instead of being just another portraitist for writers and artists, he marginalized himself by his actions: under the pretext of adjustments, he made his models wait; he made them pose for several minutes, which gives them a weary air. He may have been waiting for them to behave more naturally. And so we are faced with Francis Bacon balancing precariously, Samuel Beckett, Jean Dubuffet or even Michel Foucault more or less squeezed into their chairs. Intimate images" (Sylvie Rousselle-Tellier, "Une image de fatigue chez Marc Trivier [Marc Trivier's Tired Look]", Marges 2004).

Photographed in their personal worlds, mostly in their bedrooms, the subjects let themselves go, are no longer in charge of their image. The lack of balance that results reveals the fragilities of these strong characters and allows Trivier to reconstitute the unity of the private body with the public work.
 

"I was reading Genet ; for me Genet was letters on a page. And then one day I saw a photo of him and there was some kind of a break. How was it possible that these symbols were also an actual person? Taking a portrait is reconciling the name and the face. " (Marc Trivier).

More than a portrait, each photo is the witness of an exchange between the subject and the artist, of a moment from real life. The presence of the photographer is palpable in each portrait Trivier takes:

 

"What interested me was not simply capturing a body or a face, but that specific situation where one is in the process of taking a photo of another" (Marc Trivier). 

 
 

Large original black and white photographic portrait by Marc Trivier.
Original unsigned silver gelatin print, like most of Trivier's works.
Precious original silver gelatin print by the famous Belgian photographer, one of the most secretive contemporary artists, who despite early international success, preferred to limit his production to preserve the coherence of his work. Marc Trivier does not make new prints of his old portraits, and the printing paper he used is no longer commercially available. The artist "makes his own prints on Ilford baryta paper, devoting several days of work to each one, with particular concentration on rendering the whites, in contrast with blacks of rare density. A Marc Trivier print resembles no other. When he agrees to exhibit them, he suspends them in stainless steel frames of his own making, allowing free rein to the life of the paper." (Xavier-Gilles, "Marc Trivier et la tragédie de la lumière" ["Marc Trivier and the tragedy of light"] in Le Monde Libertaire, 2011). This "life of the paper" participates in the work in the same way as the various alterations that photographs undergo when they are exhibited: "In the boxes, the prints warp, but no matter: the photographer is fond of this kind of accident." (Claire Guillot, "Les face à face sans échappatoire du photographe Marc Trivier" ["The inescapable face-to-face encounters of photographer Marc Trivier"], Le Monde, 2011). Marc Trivier has a particular sensitivity for the material aspect of his productions. While photography is essentially about multiples, this intervention by the artist in the entire creative process confers an autographic aura to these prints.


Photographs of artists, madmen, trees or slaughterhouses, Marc Trivier approaches all these subjects with a gaze as precise as it is intense.

"In his cosmogony, each thing, each being, plant, animal or human, deserves the same respect. For all are confronted with the same iron law: solitude." (Luc Desbenoit).

The beauty that emanates from his photos comes from this nakedness. There are no retouching, no cropping. We find in his work the same square format underlined by the square of the negative that Trivier leaves on his prints. This frame traps our gaze in photographs where the artifice of color is rejected for an incisive black and white. All artificiality having disappeared, we do not face the staging of a subject but a presence exacerbated by the radiating and singular light, witness to an instant of life and not of pose. It is this light, linked to the photographic medium, that unites Marc Trivier's series:


"Marc Trivier's photographs write a tragedy of light, which welcomes beings - men, trees or beasts - only by burning them, before disappearance." (Xavier-Gilles in Le Monde Libertaire).

It is also this light, freed from all artifices, that gives his works the aura that makes them so present. This "burn" of light refers us to a real instant, to Barthes's "that-has-been" (Camera Lucida, 1980):


"From thirty-five years of photographic practice, of obsessions, this is perhaps what remains: a singular mode of recording the burn of light, declined from one image to another, in a succession of propositions that resemble each other and yet each is as singular as the fraction of time to which it refers." (Marc Trivier).

"Photography says only one thing: 'It was.' We fix only what has been. If there is a tragedy, it is there." (Marc Trivier)

Warhol, Foucault, Beckett, Dubuffet... the greatest writers and artists have posed for Trivier. Simultaneously the artist is also interested in the margins of society, in what men do not want to see. He then photographs the mentally ill and slaughterhouses which he places alongside celebrities. From the end of the 1980s his work is unanimously recognized and he receives the prestigious Young Photographer Award from the International Center of Photography in 1988 as well as the Prix Photographie Ouverte (Charleroi). After the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the Musée de l'Elysée in Lausanne and the Casino in Luxembourg, the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris dedicates an important retrospective to him in 2011.

The photographs of the mentally ill that Trivier made during the same period were deliberately mixed with those of artists during the 2011 Paris retrospective. Far from an attempt to oppose madness and genius, this juxtaposition was instead an opportunity to question our gaze on these two phantasmatic poles of the human person.
While photographs by doctors like those of Charcot in the 19th century emphasize the illness of patients and make them pose in ways to make their symptoms visible, those taken by Trivier do not seek to make the madman a simple witness to a pathology, nor even an "other," someone who would be characterized by his difference. As with his series on artists, Marc Trivier breaks away from the system of posing which is an artifice to reach the humanity of his subjects. These men have a powerful gaze and a strong presence that contradicts their anonymity.
Like the artists, whose mystery they seem to share, the "madmen" question our own presence.

Large original black and white photographic portrait by Marc Trivier.
Original unsigned silver gelatin print, as with most of Trivier's works.
Precious original silver gelatin print by the renowned Belgian photographer, one of the most secretive contemporary artists, who despite early international success, chose to limit his production to preserve the coherence of his work. Marc Trivier does not make new prints of his older portraits; the printing paper he used is no longer commercially available. The artist "makes his own prints on Ilford baryta paper, devoting several days of work to each one, with particular concentration on rendering the whites, in contrast with blacks of rare density. A Marc Trivier print resembles no other. When he agrees to exhibit them, he suspends them in stainless steel frames of his own making, allowing free rein to the life of the paper." (Xavier-Gilles, « Marc Trivier et la tragédie de la lumière » ["Marc Trivier and the tragedy of light"] in Le Monde Libertaire, 2011). This "life of the paper" participates in the work in the same way as the various alterations that photographs undergo when exhibited: "In the boxes, the prints warp, but no matter: the photographer is fond of this kind of accident." (Claire Guillot, « Les face à face sans échappatoire du photographe Marc Trivier » ["The inescapable face-to-face encounters of photographer Marc Trivier"], Le Monde, 2011). Marc Trivier has a particular sensitivity for the material aspect of his productions. While photography is essentially multiple in nature, this intervention by the artist in the entire creative process confers an autographic aura on these prints.


Photographs of artists, madmen, trees or slaughterhouses, Marc Trivier approaches all these subjects with a gaze that is both precise and intense.

« Dans sa cosmogonie, chaque chose, chaque être, végétal, animal ou humain, mérite le même respect. Car tous sont confrontés à la même loi d'airain : la solitude. » ["In his cosmogony, each thing, each being, plant, animal or human, deserves the same respect. For all are confronted with the same iron law: solitude."] (Luc Desbenoit).

The beauty that emanates from his photographs comes from this nakedness. There are no retouches, no reframings. We find in his work the same square format underlined by the square of the negative that Trivier leaves on his prints. This frame traps our gaze in photographs where the artifice of color is rejected for an incisive black and white. With all artificiality having disappeared, we do not face the staging of a subject but a presence heightened by radiating and singular light, witness to an instant of life and not of pose. It is this light, linked to the photographic medium, that unites Marc Trivier's series:


« Les photographies de Marc Trivier écrivent une tragédie de la lumière, celle-ci n'accueillant les êtres - hommes, arbres ou bêtes - qu'en les brûlant, avant disparition. » ["Marc Trivier's photographs write a tragedy of light, which welcomes beings - men, trees or beasts - only by burning them, before disappearance."] (Xavier-Gilles in Le Monde Libertaire).

It is also this light, freed from all artifices, that gives his works the aura that makes them so present. This "burning" of light brings us back to a real instant, to Barthes's "that has been" (La Chambre Claire, 1980):


« De trente-cinq ans de pratique photographique, d'obsessions, c'est peut-être ça qui reste : un mode d'enregistrement singulier de la brûlure de la lumière, décliné d'une image à l'autre, en une succession de propositions qui se ressemblent et pourtant chacune est aussi singulière que la fraction de temps auquel elle renvoie. » ["From thirty-five years of photographic practice, of obsessions, this is perhaps what remains: a singular mode of recording the burning of light, declined from one image to another, in a succession of propositions that resemble each other and yet each is as singular as the fraction of time to which it refers."] (Marc Trivier).

« La photographie ne dit qu'une chose : « C'était. » On ne fixe que ce qui a été. S'il y a une tragédie, elle est là. » ["Photography says only one thing: 'It was.' We only fix what has been. If there is a tragedy, it is there."] (Marc Trivier)


Warhol, Foucault, Beckett, Dubuffet ... the greatest writers and artists have posed for Trivier. Simultaneously the artist is also interested in the margins of society, in what men do not want to see. He then photographs the mentally ill and slaughterhouses that he places alongside celebrities. From the end of the 1980s his work is unanimously recognized and he receives the prestigious Young Photographer Award from The International Center of Photography in 1988 as well as the Prix Photographie Ouverte (Charleroi). After the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the Musée de l'Elysée in Lausanne and the Casino in Luxembourg, the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris devotes an important retrospective to him in 2011.

The photographs of the mentally ill that Trivier made during the same period were deliberately mixed with those of artists during the 2011 Parisian retrospective. Far from an attempt to oppose madness and genius, this juxtaposition was on the contrary an opportunity to question our gaze on these two fantasmatic poles of the human person.
While photographs by doctors such as those of Charcot in the 19th century emphasize the patients' illness and make them pose in ways that render their symptoms visible, those taken by Trivier do not seek to make the madman a simple witness to a pathology, nor even an "other," someone who would be characterized by his difference. As with his series on artists, Marc Trivier breaks away from the system of posing which is an artifice to reach the humanity of his subjects. These men have a powerful gaze and a strong presence that contradicts their anonymity.
Like the artists, whose mystery they seem to share, the "madmen" question our own presence.

Large original black and white photographic portrait by Marc Trivier.
Original unsigned silver gelatin print, as with most of Trivier's works.
Precious original silver gelatin print by the renowned Belgian photographer, one of the most secretive contemporary artists, who despite early international success, chose to limit his production to preserve the coherence of his work. Marc Trivier does not make new prints of his older portraits; the printing paper he used is no longer commercially available. The artist "makes his own prints on Ilford baryta paper, devoting several days of work to each one, with particular concentration on rendering the whites, in contrast with blacks of rare density. A Marc Trivier print resembles no other. When he agrees to exhibit them, he suspends them in stainless steel frames of his own making, allowing free rein to the life of the paper." (Xavier-Gilles, « Marc Trivier et la tragédie de la lumière » ["Marc Trivier and the tragedy of light"] in Le Monde Libertaire, 2011). This "life of the paper" participates in the work in the same way as the various alterations that photographs undergo when exhibited: "In the boxes, the prints warp, but no matter: the photographer is fond of this kind of accident." (Claire Guillot, « Les face à face sans échappatoire du photographe Marc Trivier » ["The inescapable face-to-face encounters of photographer Marc Trivier"], Le Monde, 2011). Marc Trivier has a particular sensitivity for the material aspect of his productions. While photography is essentially multiple in nature, this intervention by the artist in the entire creative process confers an autographic aura on these prints.


Photographs of artists, madmen, trees or slaughterhouses, Marc Trivier approaches all these subjects with a gaze that is both precise and intense.

« Dans sa cosmogonie, chaque chose, chaque être, végétal, animal ou humain, mérite le même respect. Car tous sont confrontés à la même loi d'airain : la solitude. » ["In his cosmogony, each thing, each being, plant, animal or human, deserves the same respect. For all are confronted with the same iron law: solitude."] (Luc Desbenoit).

The beauty that emanates from his photographs comes from this nakedness. There are no retouches, no reframings. We find in his work the same square format underlined by the square of the negative that Trivier leaves on his prints. This frame traps our gaze in photographs where the artifice of color is rejected for an incisive black and white. With all artificiality having disappeared, we do not face the staging of a subject but a presence heightened by radiating and singular light, witness to an instant of life and not of pose. It is this light, linked to the photographic medium, that unites Marc Trivier's series:


« Les photographies de Marc Trivier écrivent une tragédie de la lumière, celle-ci n'accueillant les êtres - hommes, arbres ou bêtes - qu'en les brûlant, avant disparition. » ["Marc Trivier's photographs write a tragedy of light, which welcomes beings - men, trees or beasts - only by burning them, before disappearance."] (Xavier-Gilles in Le Monde Libertaire).

It is also this light, freed from all artifices, that gives his works the aura that makes them so present. This "burning" of light brings us back to a real instant, to Barthes's "that has been" (La Chambre Claire, 1980):


« De trente-cinq ans de pratique photographique, d'obsessions, c'est peut-être ça qui reste : un mode d'enregistrement singulier de la brûlure de la lumière, décliné d'une image à l'autre, en une succession de propositions qui se ressemblent et pourtant chacune est aussi singulière que la fraction de temps auquel elle renvoie. » ["From thirty-five years of photographic practice, of obsessions, this is perhaps what remains: a singular mode of recording the burning of light, declined from one image to another, in a succession of propositions that resemble each other and yet each is as singular as the fraction of time to which it refers."] (Marc Trivier).

« La photographie ne dit qu'une chose : « C'était. » On ne fixe que ce qui a été. S'il y a une tragédie, elle est là. » ["Photography says only one thing: 'It was.' We only fix what has been. If there is a tragedy, it is there."] (Marc Trivier)


Warhol, Foucault, Beckett, Dubuffet ... the greatest writers and artists have posed for Trivier. Simultaneously the artist is also interested in the margins of society, in what men do not want to see. He then photographs the mentally ill and slaughterhouses that he places alongside celebrities. From the end of the 1980s his work is unanimously recognized and he receives the prestigious Young Photographer Award from The International Center of Photography in 1988 as well as the Prix Photographie Ouverte (Charleroi). After the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the Musée de l'Elysée in Lausanne and the Casino in Luxembourg, the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris devotes an important retrospective to him in 2011.

The photographs of the mentally ill that Trivier made during the same period were deliberately mixed with those of artists during the 2011 Parisian retrospective. Far from an attempt to oppose madness and genius, this juxtaposition was on the contrary an opportunity to question our gaze on these two fantasmatic poles of the human person.
While photographs by doctors such as those of Charcot in the 19th century emphasize the patients' illness and make them pose in ways that render their symptoms visible, those taken by Trivier do not seek to make the madman a simple witness to a pathology, nor even an "other," someone who would be characterized by his difference. As with his series on artists, Marc Trivier breaks away from the system of posing which is an artifice to reach the humanity of his subjects. These men have a powerful gaze and a strong presence that contradicts their anonymity.
Like the artists, whose mystery they seem to share, the "madmen" question our own presence.

Large original black and white photographic portrait by Marc Trivier.
Original unsigned silver gelatin print, like most of Trivier's works.
Precious original silver gelatin print by the celebrated Belgian photographer, one of the most secretive contemporary artists, who despite early international success, preferred to limit his production to preserve the coherence of his work. Marc Trivier does not print new copies of his earlier portraits, and the printing paper he used is no longer commercially available. The artist "produces his own prints on Ilford baryta paper, dedicating several days of work to each one, with particular concentration on rendering the whites, in contrast with blacks of rare density. A Marc Trivier print resembles no other. When he agrees to exhibit them, he suspends them in stainless steel frames of his own making, giving free rein to the life of the paper." (Xavier-Gilles, « Marc Trivier et la tragédie de la lumière » in Le Monde Libertaire, 2011). This "life of the paper" participates in the work just as much as the various alterations that photographs undergo when they are exhibited: "In boxes, the prints warp, but no matter: the photographer is fond of this kind of accident." (Claire Guillot, « Les face à face sans échappatoire du photographe Marc Trivier », Le Monde, 2011). Marc Trivier has a particular sensitivity for the material aspect of his productions. While photography is essentially multiple by nature, this intervention by the artist throughout the creative process confers an autographic aura to these prints.


Photographs of artists, madmen, trees or slaughterhouses, Marc Trivier approaches all these subjects with a gaze as precise as it is intense.

« Dans sa cosmogonie, chaque chose, chaque être, végétal, animal ou humain, mérite le même respect. Car tous sont confrontés à la même loi d'airain : la solitude. » ["In his cosmogony, each thing, each being, plant, animal or human, deserves the same respect. For all are confronted with the same iron law: solitude."] (Luc Desbenoit).

The beauty that emanates from his photos comes from this nakedness. There are no retouches, no cropping. We find in his work the same square format underlined by the square of the negative that Trivier leaves on his prints. This frame traps our gaze in photographs where the artifice of color is rejected for an incisive black and white. All artificiality having disappeared, we do not face the staging of a subject but a presence intensified by radiating and singular light, witness to an instant of life and not of pose. It is this light, linked to the photographic medium, that unites Marc Trivier's series:


« Les photographies de Marc Trivier écrivent une tragédie de la lumière, celle-ci n'accueillant les êtres - hommes, arbres ou bêtes - qu'en les brûlant, avant disparition. » ["Marc Trivier's photographs write a tragedy of light, which welcomes beings - men, trees or beasts - only by burning them, before disappearance."] (Xavier-Gilles in Le Monde Libertaire).

It is also this light, freed from all artifice, that gives his works the aura that makes them so present. This "burning" of light refers us to a real instant, to Barthes's "that has been" (Camera Lucida, 1980):


« De trente-cinq ans de pratique photographique, d'obsessions, c'est peut-être ça qui reste : un mode d'enregistrement singulier de la brûlure de la lumière, décliné d'une image à l'autre, en une succession de propositions qui se ressemblent et pourtant chacune est aussi singulière que la fraction de temps auquel elle renvoie. » ["From thirty-five years of photographic practice, of obsessions, this is perhaps what remains: a singular mode of recording the burning of light, declined from one image to another, in a succession of propositions that resemble each other and yet each is as singular as the fraction of time to which it refers."] (Marc Trivier).

« La photographie ne dit qu'une chose : « C'était. » On ne fixe que ce qui a été. S'il y a une tragédie, elle est là. » ["Photography says only one thing: 'It was.' We only fix what has been. If there is a tragedy, it is there."] (Marc Trivier)


Warhol, Foucault, Beckett, Dubuffet ... the greatest writers and artists have posed for Trivier. Simultaneously the artist is also interested in the margins of society, in what men do not want to see. He then photographs the insane and slaughterhouses which he places alongside celebrities. From the end of the 1980s his work is unanimously recognized and he receives the prestigious Young Photographer Award from the International Center of Photography in 1988 as well as the Prix Photographie Ouverte (Charleroi). After the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the Musée de l'Elysée in Lausanne and the Casino in Luxembourg, the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris dedicated an important retrospective to him in 2011.

The photographs of the insane that Trivier made during the same period were deliberately mixed with those of artists during the 2011 Parisian retrospective. Far from an attempt to oppose madness and genius, this juxtaposition was on the contrary an opportunity to question our gaze on these two phantasmatic poles of the human person.
While photographs by doctors like those of Charcot in the 19th century emphasize the illness of patients and make them pose in a way to make their symptoms visible, those taken by Trivier do not seek to make the madman a simple witness to a pathology, nor even an "other," someone who would be characterized by his difference. As with his series on artists, Marc Trivier breaks away from the system of posing which is an artifice to reach the humanity of his subjects. These men have a powerful gaze and a strong presence that contradicts their anonymity.
Like the artists, whose mystery they seem to share, the "madmen" question our own presence.

Large original black and white photographic portrait by Marc Trivier.
Original unsigned silver gelatin print, like most of Trivier's works.
Precious original silver gelatin print by the celebrated Belgian photographer, one of the most secretive contemporary artists, who despite early international success, preferred to limit his production to preserve the coherence of his work. Marc Trivier does not print new copies of his earlier portraits, and the printing paper he used is no longer commercially available. The artist "produces his own prints on Ilford baryta paper, dedicating several days of work to each one, with particular concentration on rendering the whites, in contrast with blacks of rare density. A Marc Trivier print resembles no other. When he agrees to exhibit them, he suspends them in stainless steel frames of his own making, giving free rein to the life of the paper." (Xavier-Gilles, « Marc Trivier et la tragédie de la lumière » in Le Monde Libertaire, 2011). This "life of the paper" participates in the work just as much as the various alterations that photographs undergo when they are exhibited: "In boxes, the prints warp, but no matter: the photographer is fond of this kind of accident." (Claire Guillot, « Les face à face sans échappatoire du photographe Marc Trivier », Le Monde, 2011). Marc Trivier has a particular sensitivity for the material aspect of his productions. While photography is essentially multiple by nature, this intervention by the artist throughout the creative process confers an autographic aura to these prints.


Photographs of artists, madmen, trees or slaughterhouses, Marc Trivier approaches all these subjects with a gaze as precise as it is intense.

« Dans sa cosmogonie, chaque chose, chaque être, végétal, animal ou humain, mérite le même respect. Car tous sont confrontés à la même loi d'airain : la solitude. » ["In his cosmogony, each thing, each being, plant, animal or human, deserves the same respect. For all are confronted with the same iron law: solitude."] (Luc Desbenoit).

The beauty that emanates from his photos comes from this nakedness. There are no retouches, no cropping. We find in his work the same square format underlined by the square of the negative that Trivier leaves on his prints. This frame traps our gaze in photographs where the artifice of color is rejected for an incisive black and white. All artificiality having disappeared, we do not face the staging of a subject but a presence intensified by radiating and singular light, witness to an instant of life and not of pose. It is this light, linked to the photographic medium, that unites Marc Trivier's series:


« Les photographies de Marc Trivier écrivent une tragédie de la lumière, celle-ci n'accueillant les êtres - hommes, arbres ou bêtes - qu'en les brûlant, avant disparition. » ["Marc Trivier's photographs write a tragedy of light, which welcomes beings - men, trees or beasts - only by burning them, before disappearance."] (Xavier-Gilles in Le Monde Libertaire).

It is also this light, freed from all artifice, that gives his works the aura that makes them so present. This "burning" of light refers us to a real instant, to Barthes's "that has been" (Camera Lucida, 1980):


« De trente-cinq ans de pratique photographique, d'obsessions, c'est peut-être ça qui reste : un mode d'enregistrement singulier de la brûlure de la lumière, décliné d'une image à l'autre, en une succession de propositions qui se ressemblent et pourtant chacune est aussi singulière que la fraction de temps auquel elle renvoie. » ["From thirty-five years of photographic practice, of obsessions, this is perhaps what remains: a singular mode of recording the burning of light, declined from one image to another, in a succession of propositions that resemble each other and yet each is as singular as the fraction of time to which it refers."] (Marc Trivier).

« La photographie ne dit qu'une chose : « C'était. » On ne fixe que ce qui a été. S'il y a une tragédie, elle est là. » ["Photography says only one thing: 'It was.' We only fix what has been. If there is a tragedy, it is there."] (Marc Trivier)


Warhol, Foucault, Beckett, Dubuffet ... the greatest writers and artists have posed for Trivier. Simultaneously the artist is also interested in the margins of society, in what men do not want to see. He then photographs the insane and slaughterhouses which he places alongside celebrities. From the end of the 1980s his work is unanimously recognized and he receives the prestigious Young Photographer Award from the International Center of Photography in 1988 as well as the Prix Photographie Ouverte (Charleroi). After the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the Musée de l'Elysée in Lausanne and the Casino in Luxembourg, the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris dedicated an important retrospective to him in 2011.

The photographs of the insane that Trivier made during the same period were deliberately mixed with those of artists during the 2011 Parisian retrospective. Far from an attempt to oppose madness and genius, this juxtaposition was on the contrary an opportunity to question our gaze on these two phantasmatic poles of the human person.
While photographs by doctors like those of Charcot in the 19th century emphasize the illness of patients and make them pose in a way to make their symptoms visible, those taken by Trivier do not seek to make the madman a simple witness to a pathology, nor even an "other," someone who would be characterized by his difference. As with his series on artists, Marc Trivier breaks away from the system of posing which is an artifice to reach the humanity of his subjects. These men have a powerful gaze and a strong presence that contradicts their anonymity.
Like the artists, whose mystery they seem to share, the "madmen" question our own presence.

Large original black and white photographic portrait by Marc Trivier.
Unsigned original silver gelatin print, as with most of Trivier's works.
Precious original silver gelatin proof by the celebrated Belgian photographer, one of the most secretive contemporary artists who, despite early international success, preferred to limit his production to preserve the coherence of his work. Marc Trivier does not create new prints of his earlier portraits, and the printing paper he used is no longer commercially available. The artist "produces his own prints on Ilford baryta paper, devoting several days of work to each one, with particular concentration on rendering the whites, in contrast with blacks of rare density. A Marc Trivier print resembles no other. When he agrees to exhibit them, he suspends them in stainless steel frames of his own making, giving free rein to the life of the paper." (Xavier-Gilles, « Marc Trivier et la tragédie de la lumière » in Le Monde Libertaire, 2011). This "life of the paper" participates in the work in the same way as the various alterations that photographs undergo when they are exhibited: "In the boxes, the prints warp, but no matter: the photographer is fond of this kind of accident." (Claire Guillot, « Les face à face sans échappatoire du photographe Marc Trivier », Le Monde, 2011). Marc Trivier has a particular sensitivity for the material aspect of his productions. While photography is by essence multiple, this intervention by the artist throughout the entire creative process gives an autographic aura to these prints.


Photographs of artists, madmen, trees or slaughterhouses, Marc Trivier approaches all these subjects with a gaze as precise as it is intense.

« Dans sa cosmogonie, chaque chose, chaque être, végétal, animal ou humain, mérite le même respect. Car tous sont confrontés à la même loi d'airain : la solitude. » ["In his cosmogony, each thing, each being, plant, animal or human, deserves the same respect. For all are confronted with the same iron law: solitude."] (Luc Desbenoit).

The beauty that emanates from his photos comes from this nakedness. There are neither retouchings nor reframings. We find in his work the same square format emphasized by the square of the negative that Trivier leaves on his prints. This frame traps our gaze in photographs where the artifice of color is rejected for an incisive black and white. With all artificiality having disappeared, we do not face the staging of a subject but a presence exacerbated by the radiating and singular light, witness to an instant of life and not of posing. It is this light, linked to the photographic medium, that unites Marc Trivier's series:


« Les photographies de Marc Trivier écrivent une tragédie de la lumière, celle-ci n'accueillant les êtres - hommes, arbres ou bêtes - qu'en les brûlant, avant disparition. » ["Marc Trivier's photographs write a tragedy of light, which welcomes beings - men, trees or beasts - only by burning them, before disappearance."] (Xavier-Gilles in Le Monde Libertaire).

It is also this light, delivered from all artifices, that gives his works the aura that makes them so present. This "burning" of light brings us back to a real instant, to Barthes' "that-has-been" (Camera Lucida, 1980):


« De trente-cinq ans de pratique photographique, d'obsessions, c'est peut-être ça qui reste : un mode d'enregistrement singulier de la brûlure de la lumière, décliné d'une image à l'autre, en une succession de propositions qui se ressemblent et pourtant chacune est aussi singulière que la fraction de temps auquel elle renvoie. » ["From thirty-five years of photographic practice, of obsessions, perhaps that's what remains: a singular mode of recording the burning of light, declined from one image to another, in a succession of propositions that resemble each other and yet each is as singular as the fraction of time to which it refers."] (Marc Trivier).

« La photographie ne dit qu'une chose : « C'était. » On ne fixe que ce qui a été. S'il y a une tragédie, elle est là. » ["Photography says only one thing: 'It was.' One fixes only what has been. If there is a tragedy, it is there."] (Marc Trivier)


Warhol, Foucault, Beckett, Dubuffet... the greatest writers and artists have posed for Trivier. Simultaneously the artist is also interested in the margins of society, in what men do not want to see. He then photographs the mentally ill and slaughterhouses that he places alongside celebrities. From the end of the 1980s his work is unanimously recognized and he receives the prestigious Young Photographer Award from The International Center of Photography in 1988 as well as the Prix Photographie Ouverte (Charleroi). After the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the Musée de l'Elysée in Lausanne and the Casino in Luxembourg, the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris dedicates an important retrospective to him in 2011.

The photographs of the mentally ill that Trivier created during the same period were deliberately mixed with those of artists during the Parisian retrospective of 2011. Far from an attempt to oppose madness and genius, this juxtaposition was instead the occasion for questioning our gaze upon these two fantasmatic poles of the human person.
While the photographs of doctors like those of Charcot in the 19th century emphasize the illness of patients and make them pose in ways to render their symptoms visible, those taken by Trivier do not seek to make the madman a simple witness to a pathology, nor even an "other," someone who would be characterized by their difference. As with his series on artists, Marc Trivier steps outside the system of posing which is an artifice to reach the humanity of his subjects. These men have a powerful gaze and a strong presence that contradicts their anonymity.
Like the artists, whose mystery they seem to share, the "madmen" question our own presence.

Original black and white photographic portrait by Marc Trivier.
Unsigned original silver gelatin print, as with most of Trivier's works.
Precious original silver gelatin proof by the celebrated Belgian photographer, one of the most secretive contemporary artists who, despite early international success, preferred to limit his production to preserve the coherence of his work. Marc Trivier does not create new prints of his earlier portraits, and the printing paper he used is no longer commercially available. The artist "produces his own prints on Ilford baryta paper, devoting several days of work to each one, with particular concentration on rendering the whites, in contrast with blacks of rare density. A Marc Trivier print resembles no other. When he agrees to exhibit them, he suspends them in stainless steel frames of his own making, giving free rein to the life of the paper." (Xavier-Gilles, « Marc Trivier et la tragédie de la lumière » in Le Monde Libertaire, 2011). This "life of the paper" participates in the work in the same way as the various alterations that photographs undergo when they are exhibited: "In the boxes, the prints warp, but no matter: the photographer is fond of this kind of accident." (Claire Guillot, « Les face à face sans échappatoire du photographe Marc Trivier », Le Monde, 2011). Marc Trivier has a particular sensitivity for the material aspect of his productions. While photography is by essence multiple, this intervention by the artist throughout the entire creative process gives an autographic aura to these prints.


Photographs of artists, madmen, trees or slaughterhouses, Marc Trivier approaches all these subjects with a gaze as precise as it is intense.

« Dans sa cosmogonie, chaque chose, chaque être, végétal, animal ou humain, mérite le même respect. Car tous sont confrontés à la même loi d'airain : la solitude. » ["In his cosmogony, each thing, each being, plant, animal or human, deserves the same respect. For all are confronted with the same iron law: solitude."] (Luc Desbenoit).

The beauty that emanates from his photos comes from this nakedness. There are neither retouchings nor reframings. We find in his work the same square format emphasized by the square of the negative that Trivier leaves on his prints. This frame traps our gaze in photographs where the artifice of color is rejected for an incisive black and white. With all artificiality having disappeared, we do not face the staging of a subject but a presence exacerbated by the radiating and singular light, witness to an instant of life and not of posing. It is this light, linked to the photographic medium, that unites Marc Trivier's series:

« Les photographies de Marc Trivier écrivent une tragédie de la lumière, celle-ci n'accueillant les êtres - hommes, arbres ou bêtes - qu'en les brûlant, avant disparition. »

["Marc Trivier's photographs write a tragedy of light, which welcomes beings - men, trees or beasts - only by burning them, before disappearance."] (Xavier-Gilles in Le Monde Libertaire).


It is also this light, delivered from all artifices, that gives his works the aura that makes them so present. This "burning" of light brings us back to a real instant, to Barthes' "that-has-been" (Camera Lucida, 1980):

« De trente-cinq ans de pratique photographique, d'obsessions, c'est peut-être ça qui reste : un mode d'enregistrement singulier de la brûlure de la lumière, décliné d'une image à l'autre, en une succession de propositions qui se ressemblent et pourtant chacune est aussi singulière que la fraction de temps auquel elle renvoie. »

["From thirty-five years of photographic practice, of obsessions, perhaps that's what remains: a singular mode of recording the burning of light, declined from one image to another, in a succession of propositions that resemble each other and yet each is as singular as the fraction of time to which it refers."] (Marc Trivier).

« La photographie ne dit qu'une chose : « C'était. » On ne fixe que ce qui a été. S'il y a une tragédie, elle est là. » ["Photography says only one thing: 'It was.' One fixes only what has been. If there is a tragedy, it is there."] (Marc Trivier)

Warhol, Foucault, Beckett, Dubuffet... the greatest writers and artists have posed for Trivier. Simultaneously the artist is also interested in the margins of society, in what men do not want to see. He then photographs the mentally ill and slaughterhouses that he places alongside celebrities. From the end of the 1980s his work is unanimously recognized and he receives the prestigious Young Photographer Award from The International Center of Photography in 1988 as well as the Prix Photographie Ouverte (Charleroi). After the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the Musée de l'Elysée in Lausanne and the Casino in Luxembourg, the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris dedicates an important retrospective to him in 2011.



The photographs of the great personalities of his era that Marc Trivier creates do not seek to show the public image of these artists. Taken from the front, with a gaze directed toward the lens, they show us an image of intimacy:

« (...) au lieu d'être un portraitiste d'écrivains et d'artistes parmi tant d'autres, il se marginalise par son dispositif : sous prétexte de réglages, il fait attendre ses modèles, il les fait poser plusieurs minutes ce qui leur donne un air las. Il attend peut-être un comportement plus naturel. Et on se retrouve face à Francis Bacon en équilibre précaire, Samuel Beckett, Jean Dubuffet ou encore Michel Foucault plus ou moins tassés sur leur chaise. Des images intimes. »

["(...) instead of being a portraitist of writers and artists among so many others, he marginalizes himself through his approach: under the pretext of adjustments, he makes his models wait, he makes them pose for several minutes which gives them a weary air. Perhaps he awaits more natural behavior. And we find ourselves facing Francis Bacon in precarious balance, Samuel Beckett, Jean Dubuffet or Michel Foucault more or less slumped in their chair. Intimate images."] (Sylvie Rousselle-Tellier, « Une image de fatigue chez Marc Trivier », Marges 2004).




Photographed in their personal universe, most of the time their bedroom, the subjects abandon themselves, no longer control their image. The imbalance that results reveals the fragilities of these strong personalities, and allows Trivier to restore the unity of the intimate body and the public work.

« Je lisais Genet ; pour moi Genet, c'était des lettres sur un livre. Et puis un jour j'ai vu son portrait, il y a eu comme une fracture. Comment était-il possible que ces signes soient aussi quelqu'un ? Faire un portrait, c'est ressouder le nom et le visage. »

["I was reading Genet; for me Genet was letters on a book. And then one day I saw his portrait, there was like a fracture. How was it possible that these signs could also be someone? Making a portrait is reuniting the name and the face."] (Marc Trivier).


More than a portrait, each photo is the testimony of an exchange between the subject and the artist, of an instant of real life. The presence of the photographer is perceptible in each of the portraits that Trivier creates:

« Ce qui m'intéressait, ce n'était pas de photographier simplement un corps ou un visage, mais cette situation particulière qui est quelqu'un en train de faire la photo de quelqu'un d'autre. »

["What interested me was not simply photographing a body or a face, but this particular situation which is someone in the process of taking a photo of someone else."] (Marc Trivier).

Original black and white photographic portrait by Marc Trivier.
Original unsigned gelatin silver print, like most of Trivier's works.
Precious original gelatin silver proof by the celebrated Belgian photographer, one of the most secretive contemporary artists, who despite early international success, preferred to limit his production to preserve the coherence of his work. Marc Trivier does not make new prints of his old portraits, and the printing paper he used is no longer commercially available. The artist "makes his own prints on Ilford baryta paper, devoting several days of work to each, with particular concentration on rendering the whites, in contrast with blacks of rare density. A Marc Trivier print resembles no other. When he agrees to exhibit them, he suspends them in stainless steel frames of his own making, giving free rein to the life of the paper." (Xavier-Gilles, "Marc Trivier et la tragédie de la lumière" ["Marc Trivier and the tragedy of light"] in Le Monde Libertaire, 2011). This "life of the paper" participates in the work just as much as the various alterations that photographs undergo when they are exhibited: "Dans les boites, les tirages gondolent, mais qu'importe : le photographe affectionne ce genre d'accident." ["In the boxes, the prints buckle, but no matter: the photographer is fond of this kind of accident."] (Claire Guillot, "Les face à face sans échappatoire du photographe Marc Trivier" ["The inescapable face-to-face encounters of photographer Marc Trivier"], Le Monde, 2011). Marc Trivier has a particular sensitivity for the material aspect of his productions. While photography is essentially a multiple medium, this intervention by the artist in the entire creative process confers an autographic aura to these prints.


Photographs of artists, madmen, trees or slaughterhouses, Marc Trivier approaches all these subjects with a gaze as precise as it is intense.

"Dans sa cosmogonie, chaque chose, chaque être, végétal, animal ou humain, mérite le même respect. Car tous sont confrontés à la même loi d'airain : la solitude." ["In his cosmogony, each thing, each being, plant, animal or human, deserves the same respect. For all are confronted with the same iron law: solitude."] (Luc Desbenoit).

The beauty that emanates from his photos comes from this nakedness. There are neither retouches nor cropping. We find in his work the same square format underlined by the square of the negative that Trivier leaves on his prints. This frame traps our gaze in photographs where the artifice of color is rejected for an incisive black and white. All artificiality having disappeared, we do not face the staging of a subject but a presence exacerbated by the radiating and singular light, witness to an instant of life and not of posing. It is this light, linked to the photographic medium, that unites Marc Trivier's series:

"Les photographies de Marc Trivier écrivent une tragédie de la lumière, celle-ci n'accueillant les êtres - hommes, arbres ou bêtes - qu'en les brûlant, avant disparition." ["Marc Trivier's photographs write a tragedy of light, which welcomes beings - men, trees or beasts - only by burning them, before disappearance."] (Xavier-Gilles in Le Monde Libertaire).

It is also this light, freed from all artifices, that gives his works the aura that makes them so present. This "burning" of light brings us back to a real instant, to Barthes's "that has been" (La Chambre Claire, 1980):

"De trente-cinq ans de pratique photographique, d'obsessions, c'est peut-être ça qui reste : un mode d'enregistrement singulier de la brûlure de la lumière, décliné d'une image à l'autre, en une succession de propositions qui se ressemblent et pourtant chacune est aussi singulière que la fraction de temps auquel elle renvoie." ["From thirty-five years of photographic practice, of obsessions, perhaps this is what remains: a singular mode of recording the burning of light, declined from one image to another, in a succession of propositions that resemble each other and yet each is as singular as the fraction of time to which it refers."] (Marc Trivier).

"La photographie ne dit qu'une chose : « C'était. » On ne fixe que ce qui a été. S'il y a une tragédie, elle est là." ["Photography says only one thing: 'It was.' We fix only what has been. If there is a tragedy, it is there."] (Marc Trivier)

Warhol, Foucault, Beckett, Dubuffet... the greatest writers and artists have posed for Trivier. Simultaneously the artist is also interested in the margins of society, in what men do not want to see. He then photographs the mentally ill and slaughterhouses which he places alongside celebrities. From the end of the 1980s his work is unanimously recognized and he receives the prestigious Young Photographer Award from the International Center of Photography in 1988 as well as the Prix Photographie Ouverte (Charleroi). After the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the Musée de l'Elysée in Lausanne and the Casino in Luxembourg, the Maison Européenne de la photographie in Paris devotes an important retrospective to him in 2011.



The photographs of the great personalities of his era that Marc Trivier creates do not seek to show the public image of these artists. Taken head-on, with a gaze directed toward the lens, they show us an image of intimacy:

"(...) au lieu d'être un portraitiste d'écrivains et d'artistes parmi tant d'autres, il se marginalise par son dispositif : sous prétexte de réglages, il fait attendre ses modèles, il les fait poser plusieurs minutes ce qui leur donne un air las. Il attend peut-être un comportement plus naturel. Et on se retrouve face à Francis Bacon en équilibre précaire, Samuel Beckett, Jean Dubuffet ou encore Michel Foucault plus ou moins tassés sur leur chaise. Des images intimes." ["(...) instead of being a portraitist of writers and artists among so many others, he marginalizes himself through his approach: under the pretext of adjustments, he makes his models wait, he makes them pose for several minutes which gives them a weary air. Perhaps he waits for more natural behavior. And we find ourselves facing Francis Bacon in precarious balance, Samuel Beckett, Jean Dubuffet or Michel Foucault more or less slumped in their chairs. Intimate images."] (Sylvie Rousselle-Tellier, "Une image de fatigue chez Marc Trivier" ["An image of fatigue in Marc Trivier"], Marges 2004).

Photographed in their personal universe, most often their bedroom, the subjects abandon themselves, no longer control their image. The resulting imbalance reveals the fragilities of these strong personalities, and allows Trivier to restore the unity of the intimate body and the public work.

"Je lisais Genet ; pour moi Genet, c'était des lettres sur un livre. Et puis un jour j'ai vu son portrait, il y a eu comme une fracture. Comment était-il possible que ces signes soient aussi quelqu'un ? Faire un portrait, c'est ressouder le nom et le visage." ["I was reading Genet; for me Genet was letters on a book. And then one day I saw his portrait, there was like a fracture. How was it possible that these signs were also someone? Making a portrait is reuniting the name and the face."] (Marc Trivier).

More than a portrait, each photo is the testimony of an exchange between the subject and the artist, of an instant of real life. The photographer's presence is perceptible in each of the portraits that Trivier creates:

"Ce qui m'intéressait, ce n'était pas de photographier simplement un corps ou un visage, mais cette situation particulière qui est quelqu'un en train de faire la photo de quelqu'un d'autre." ["What interested me was not simply photographing a body or a face, but this particular situation which is someone taking a photo of someone else."] (Marc Trivier).

Original black and white photographic portrait by Marc Trivier.
Original unsigned gelatin silver print, like most of Trivier's works.
Precious original gelatin silver proof by the celebrated Belgian photographer, one of the most secretive contemporary artists, who despite early international success, preferred to limit his production to preserve the coherence of his work. Marc Trivier does not make new prints of his old portraits, and the printing paper he used is no longer commercially available. The artist "makes his own prints on Ilford baryta paper, devoting several days of work to each, with particular concentration on rendering the whites, in contrast with blacks of rare density. A Marc Trivier print resembles no other. When he agrees to exhibit them, he suspends them in stainless steel frames of his own making, giving free rein to the life of the paper." (Xavier-Gilles, "Marc Trivier et la tragédie de la lumière" ["Marc Trivier and the tragedy of light"] in Le Monde Libertaire, 2011). This "life of the paper" participates in the work just as much as the various alterations that photographs undergo when they are exhibited: "Dans les boites, les tirages gondolent, mais qu'importe : le photographe affectionne ce genre d'accident." ["In the boxes, the prints buckle, but no matter: the photographer is fond of this kind of accident."] (Claire Guillot, "Les face à face sans échappatoire du photographe Marc Trivier" ["The inescapable face-to-face encounters of photographer Marc Trivier"], Le Monde, 2011). Marc Trivier has a particular sensitivity for the material aspect of his productions. While photography is essentially a multiple medium, this intervention by the artist in the entire creative process confers an autographic aura to these prints.


Photographs of artists, madmen, trees or slaughterhouses, Marc Trivier approaches all these subjects with a gaze as precise as it is intense.

"Dans sa cosmogonie, chaque chose, chaque être, végétal, animal ou humain, mérite le même respect. Car tous sont confrontés à la même loi d'airain : la solitude." ["In his cosmogony, each thing, each being, plant, animal or human, deserves the same respect. For all are confronted with the same iron law: solitude."] (Luc Desbenoit).

The beauty that emanates from his photos comes from this nakedness. There are neither retouches nor cropping. We find in his work the same square format underlined by the square of the negative that Trivier leaves on his prints. This frame traps our gaze in photographs where the artifice of color is rejected for an incisive black and white. All artificiality having disappeared, we do not face the staging of a subject but a presence exacerbated by the radiating and singular light, witness to an instant of life and not of posing. It is this light, linked to the photographic medium, that unites Marc Trivier's series:

"Les photographies de Marc Trivier écrivent une tragédie de la lumière, celle-ci n'accueillant les êtres - hommes, arbres ou bêtes - qu'en les brûlant, avant disparition." ["Marc Trivier's photographs write a tragedy of light, which welcomes beings - men, trees or beasts - only by burning them, before disappearance."] (Xavier-Gilles in Le Monde Libertaire).

It is also this light, freed from all artifices, that gives his works the aura that makes them so present. This "burning" of light brings us back to a real instant, to Barthes's "that has been" (La Chambre Claire, 1980):

"De trente-cinq ans de pratique photographique, d'obsessions, c'est peut-être ça qui reste : un mode d'enregistrement singulier de la brûlure de la lumière, décliné d'une image à l'autre, en une succession de propositions qui se ressemblent et pourtant chacune est aussi singulière que la fraction de temps auquel elle renvoie." ["From thirty-five years of photographic practice, of obsessions, perhaps this is what remains: a singular mode of recording the burning of light, declined from one image to another, in a succession of propositions that resemble each other and yet each is as singular as the fraction of time to which it refers."] (Marc Trivier).

"La photographie ne dit qu'une chose : « C'était. » On ne fixe que ce qui a été. S'il y a une tragédie, elle est là." ["Photography says only one thing: 'It was.' We fix only what has been. If there is a tragedy, it is there."] (Marc Trivier)

Warhol, Foucault, Beckett, Dubuffet... the greatest writers and artists have posed for Trivier. Simultaneously the artist is also interested in the margins of society, in what men do not want to see. He then photographs the mentally ill and slaughterhouses which he places alongside celebrities. From the end of the 1980s his work is unanimously recognized and he receives the prestigious Young Photographer Award from the International Center of Photography in 1988 as well as the Prix Photographie Ouverte (Charleroi). After the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the Musée de l'Elysée in Lausanne and the Casino in Luxembourg, the Maison Européenne de la photographie in Paris devotes an important retrospective to him in 2011.



The photographs of the great personalities of his era that Marc Trivier creates do not seek to show the public image of these artists. Taken head-on, with a gaze directed toward the lens, they show us an image of intimacy:

"(...) au lieu d'être un portraitiste d'écrivains et d'artistes parmi tant d'autres, il se marginalise par son dispositif : sous prétexte de réglages, il fait attendre ses modèles, il les fait poser plusieurs minutes ce qui leur donne un air las. Il attend peut-être un comportement plus naturel. Et on se retrouve face à Francis Bacon en équilibre précaire, Samuel Beckett, Jean Dubuffet ou encore Michel Foucault plus ou moins tassés sur leur chaise. Des images intimes." ["(...) instead of being a portraitist of writers and artists among so many others, he marginalizes himself through his approach: under the pretext of adjustments, he makes his models wait, he makes them pose for several minutes which gives them a weary air. Perhaps he waits for more natural behavior. And we find ourselves facing Francis Bacon in precarious balance, Samuel Beckett, Jean Dubuffet or Michel Foucault more or less slumped in their chairs. Intimate images."] (Sylvie Rousselle-Tellier, "Une image de fatigue chez Marc Trivier" ["An image of fatigue in Marc Trivier"], Marges 2004).

Photographed in their personal universe, most often their bedroom, the subjects abandon themselves, no longer control their image. The resulting imbalance reveals the fragilities of these strong personalities, and allows Trivier to restore the unity of the intimate body and the public work.

"Je lisais Genet ; pour moi Genet, c'était des lettres sur un livre. Et puis un jour j'ai vu son portrait, il y a eu comme une fracture. Comment était-il possible que ces signes soient aussi quelqu'un ? Faire un portrait, c'est ressouder le nom et le visage." ["I was reading Genet; for me Genet was letters on a book. And then one day I saw his portrait, there was like a fracture. How was it possible that these signs were also someone? Making a portrait is reuniting the name and the face."] (Marc Trivier).

More than a portrait, each photo is the testimony of an exchange between the subject and the artist, of an instant of real life. The photographer's presence is perceptible in each of the portraits that Trivier creates:

"Ce qui m'intéressait, ce n'était pas de photographier simplement un corps ou un visage, mais cette situation particulière qui est quelqu'un en train de faire la photo de quelqu'un d'autre." ["What interested me was not simply photographing a body or a face, but this particular situation which is someone taking a photo of someone else."] (Marc Trivier).

Original black and white photographic portrait by Marc Trivier.
Original unsigned silver print, like most of Trivier's works.
Tape repair marks and white portion torn in places.
Precious original silver print by the celebrated Belgian photographer, one of the most secretive contemporary artists, who despite early international success, preferred to limit his production to preserve the coherence of his work. Marc Trivier does not make new prints of his old portraits, and the printing paper he used is no longer commercially available. The artist "makes his own prints on Ilford baryta paper, dedicating several days of work to each, with particular concentration on rendering the whites, in contrast with blacks of rare density. A Marc Trivier print resembles no other. When he agrees to exhibit them, he suspends them in stainless steel frames of his own making, giving free rein to the life of the paper." (Xavier-Gilles, "Marc Trivier et la tragédie de la lumière" ["Marc Trivier and the tragedy of light"] in Le Monde Libertaire, 2011). This "life of the paper" participates in the work in the same way as the various alterations that photographs undergo when they are exhibited: "In the boxes, the prints warp, but no matter: the photographer is fond of this kind of accident." (Claire Guillot, "Les face à face sans échappatoire du photographe Marc Trivier" ["The inescapable face-to-face encounters of photographer Marc Trivier"], Le Monde, 2011). Marc Trivier has a particular sensitivity for the material aspect of his productions. While photography is essentially about the multiple, this intervention by the artist in the entire creative process confers an autographic aura to these prints.


Photographs of artists, madmen, trees or slaughterhouses, Marc Trivier approaches all these subjects with a gaze as precise as it is intense.

"Dans sa cosmogonie, chaque chose, chaque être, végétal, animal ou humain, mérite le même respect. Car tous sont confrontés à la même loi d'airain : la solitude." ["In his cosmogony, each thing, each being, plant, animal or human, deserves the same respect. For all are confronted with the same iron law: solitude."] (Luc Desbenoit).

The beauty that emanates from his photos comes from this nakedness. There are no retouching, no reframing. We find in his work the same square format emphasized by the square of the negative that Trivier leaves on his prints. This frame traps our gaze in photographs where the makeup of color is rejected for an incisive black and white. All artificiality having disappeared, we are not facing the staging of a subject but a presence exacerbated by the radiating and singular light, witness to an instant of life and not of pose. It is this light, linked to the photographic medium, that unites Marc Trivier's series:

"Les photographies de Marc Trivier écrivent une tragédie de la lumière, celle-ci n'accueillant les êtres - hommes, arbres ou bêtes - qu'en les brûlant, avant disparition." ["Marc Trivier's photographs write a tragedy of light, welcoming beings - men, trees or beasts - only by burning them, before disappearance."] (Xavier-Gilles in Le Monde Libertaire).

It is also this light, freed from all artifices, that gives his works the aura that makes them so present. This "burning" of light brings us back to a real instant, to Barthes' "that has been" (La Chambre Claire, 1980):

"De trente-cinq ans de pratique photographique, d'obsessions, c'est peut-être ça qui reste : un mode d'enregistrement singulier de la brûlure de la lumière, décliné d'une image à l'autre, en une succession de propositions qui se ressemblent et pourtant chacune est aussi singulière que la fraction de temps auquel elle renvoie." ["From thirty-five years of photographic practice, of obsessions, perhaps this is what remains: a singular mode of recording the burning of light, declining from one image to another, in a succession of propositions that resemble each other and yet each is as singular as the fraction of time to which it refers."] (Marc Trivier).

"La photographie ne dit qu'une chose : « C'était. » On ne fixe que ce qui a été. S'il y a une tragédie, elle est là." ["Photography says only one thing: 'It was.' We only fix what has been. If there is a tragedy, it is there."] (Marc Trivier)

Warhol, Foucault, Beckett, Dubuffet... the greatest writers and artists have posed for Trivier. Simultaneously the artist is also interested in the margins of society, in what men do not want to see. He then photographs the insane and slaughterhouses that he places alongside celebrities. From the end of the 1980s his work is unanimously recognized and he receives the prestigious Young Photographer Award from the International Center of Photography in 1988 as well as the Prix Photographie Ouverte (Charleroi). After the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the Musée de l'Elysée in Lausanne and the Casino in Luxembourg, the Maison Européenne de la photographie in Paris dedicates an important retrospective to him in 2011.



The photographs of the great personalities of his time that Marc Trivier creates do not seek to show the public image of these artists. Taken face-on, with a gaze directed toward the lens, they show us an image of intimacy:

"(...) au lieu d'être un portraitiste d'écrivains et d'artistes parmi tant d'autres, il se marginalise par son dispositif : sous prétexte de réglages, il fait attendre ses modèles, il les fait poser plusieurs minutes ce qui leur donne un air las. Il attend peut-être un comportement plus naturel. Et on se retrouve face à Francis Bacon en équilibre précaire, Samuel Beckett, Jean Dubuffet ou encore Michel Foucault plus ou moins tassés sur leur chaise. Des images intimes." ["(...) instead of being a portraitist of writers and artists among so many others, he marginalizes himself through his method: under the pretext of adjustments, he makes his models wait, he makes them pose for several minutes which gives them a weary air. He perhaps waits for more natural behavior. And we find ourselves facing Francis Bacon in precarious balance, Samuel Beckett, Jean Dubuffet or Michel Foucault more or less slumped in their chair. Intimate images."] (Sylvie Rousselle-Tellier, "Une image de fatigue chez Marc Trivier" ["An image of fatigue in Marc Trivier"], Marges 2004).

Photographed in their personal universe, most often their bedroom, the subjects abandon themselves, no longer control their image. The imbalance that results reveals the fragilities of these such strong personalities, and allows Trivier to restore the unity of the intimate body and the public work.

"Je lisais Genet ; pour moi Genet, c'était des lettres sur un livre. Et puis un jour j'ai vu son portrait, il y a eu comme une fracture. Comment était-il possible que ces signes soient aussi quelqu'un ? Faire un portrait, c'est ressouder le nom et le visage." ["I was reading Genet; for me Genet was letters on a book. And then one day I saw his portrait, there was like a fracture. How was it possible that these signs were also someone? Making a portrait is re-welding the name and the face."] (Marc Trivier).

More than a portrait, each photo is the testimony of an exchange between the subject and the artist, of an instant of real life. The presence of the photographer is felt in each of the portraits that Trivier creates:

"Ce qui m'intéressait, ce n'était pas de photographier simplement un corps ou un visage, mais cette situation particulière qui est quelqu'un en train de faire la photo de quelqu'un d'autre." ["What interested me was not simply photographing a body or a face, but this particular situation which is someone in the process of taking a photo of someone else."] (Marc Trivier).

Large original black and white photographic portrait by Marc Trivier.
Original unsigned silver print, like most of Trivier's works.
Precious original silver print by the celebrated Belgian photographer, one of the most secretive contemporary artists, who despite early international success, preferred to limit his production to preserve the coherence of his work. Marc Trivier does not make new prints of his old portraits, and the printing paper he used is no longer commercially available. The artist "makes his own prints on Ilford baryta paper, dedicating several days of work to each, with particular concentration on rendering the whites, in contrast with blacks of rare density. A Marc Trivier print resembles no other. When he agrees to exhibit them, he suspends them in stainless steel frames of his own making, giving free rein to the life of the paper." (Xavier-Gilles, "Marc Trivier et la tragédie de la lumière" ["Marc Trivier and the tragedy of light"] in Le Monde Libertaire, 2011). This "life of the paper" participates in the work in the same way as the various alterations that photographs undergo when they are exhibited: "In the boxes, the prints warp, but no matter: the photographer is fond of this kind of accident." (Claire Guillot, "Les face à face sans échappatoire du photographe Marc Trivier" ["The inescapable face-to-face encounters of photographer Marc Trivier"], Le Monde, 2011). Marc Trivier has a particular sensitivity for the material aspect of his productions. While photography is essentially about the multiple, this intervention by the artist in the entire creative process confers an autographic aura to these prints.


Photographs of artists, madmen, trees or slaughterhouses, Marc Trivier approaches all these subjects with a gaze as precise as it is intense.

"Dans sa cosmogonie, chaque chose, chaque être, végétal, animal ou humain, mérite le même respect. Car tous sont confrontés à la même loi d'airain : la solitude." ["In his cosmogony, each thing, each being, plant, animal or human, deserves the same respect. For all are confronted with the same iron law: solitude."] (Luc Desbenoit).

The beauty that emanates from his photos comes from this nakedness. There are no retouching, no reframing. We find in his work the same square format emphasized by the square of the negative that Trivier leaves on his prints. This frame traps our gaze in photographs where the makeup of color is rejected for an incisive black and white. All artificiality having disappeared, we are not facing the staging of a subject but a presence exacerbated by the radiating and singular light, witness to an instant of life and not of pose. It is this light, linked to the photographic medium, that unites Marc Trivier's series:

"Les photographies de Marc Trivier écrivent une tragédie de la lumière, celle-ci n'accueillant les êtres - hommes, arbres ou bêtes - qu'en les brûlant, avant disparition." ["Marc Trivier's photographs write a tragedy of light, welcoming beings - men, trees or beasts - only by burning them, before disappearance."] (Xavier-Gilles in Le Monde Libertaire).

It is also this light, freed from all artifices, that gives his works the aura that makes them so present. This "burning" of light brings us back to a real instant, to Barthes' "that has been" (La Chambre Claire, 1980):

"De trente-cinq ans de pratique photographique, d'obsessions, c'est peut-être ça qui reste : un mode d'enregistrement singulier de la brûlure de la lumière, décliné d'une image à l'autre, en une succession de propositions qui se ressemblent et pourtant chacune est aussi singulière que la fraction de temps auquel elle renvoie." ["From thirty-five years of photographic practice, of obsessions, perhaps this is what remains: a singular mode of recording the burning of light, declining from one image to another, in a succession of propositions that resemble each other and yet each is as singular as the fraction of time to which it refers."] (Marc Trivier).

"La photographie ne dit qu'une chose : « C'était. » On ne fixe que ce qui a été. S'il y a une tragédie, elle est là." ["Photography says only one thing: 'It was.' We only fix what has been. If there is a tragedy, it is there."] (Marc Trivier)

Warhol, Foucault, Beckett, Dubuffet... the greatest writers and artists have posed for Trivier. Simultaneously the artist is also interested in the margins of society, in what men do not want to see. He then photographs the insane and slaughterhouses that he places alongside celebrities. From the end of the 1980s his work is unanimously recognized and he receives the prestigious Young Photographer Award from the International Center of Photography in 1988 as well as the Prix Photographie Ouverte (Charleroi). After the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the Musée de l'Elysée in Lausanne and the Casino in Luxembourg, the Maison Européenne de la photographie in Paris dedicates an important retrospective to him in 2011.



The photographs of the great personalities of his time that Marc Trivier creates do not seek to show the public image of these artists. Taken face-on, with a gaze directed toward the lens, they show us an image of intimacy:

"(...) au lieu d'être un portraitiste d'écrivains et d'artistes parmi tant d'autres, il se marginalise par son dispositif : sous prétexte de réglages, il fait attendre ses modèles, il les fait poser plusieurs minutes ce qui leur donne un air las. Il attend peut-être un comportement plus naturel. Et on se retrouve face à Francis Bacon en équilibre précaire, Samuel Beckett, Jean Dubuffet ou encore Michel Foucault plus ou moins tassés sur leur chaise. Des images intimes." ["(...) instead of being a portraitist of writers and artists among so many others, he marginalizes himself through his method: under the pretext of adjustments, he makes his models wait, he makes them pose for several minutes which gives them a weary air. He perhaps waits for more natural behavior. And we find ourselves facing Francis Bacon in precarious balance, Samuel Beckett, Jean Dubuffet or Michel Foucault more or less slumped in their chair. Intimate images."] (Sylvie Rousselle-Tellier, "Une image de fatigue chez Marc Trivier" ["An image of fatigue in Marc Trivier"], Marges 2004).

Photographed in their personal universe, most often their bedroom, the subjects abandon themselves, no longer control their image. The imbalance that results reveals the fragilities of these such strong personalities, and allows Trivier to restore the unity of the intimate body and the public work.

"Je lisais Genet ; pour moi Genet, c'était des lettres sur un livre. Et puis un jour j'ai vu son portrait, il y a eu comme une fracture. Comment était-il possible que ces signes soient aussi quelqu'un ? Faire un portrait, c'est ressouder le nom et le visage." ["I was reading Genet; for me Genet was letters on a book. And then one day I saw his portrait, there was like a fracture. How was it possible that these signs were also someone? Making a portrait is re-welding the name and the face."] (Marc Trivier).

More than a portrait, each photo is the testimony of an exchange between the subject and the artist, of an instant of real life. The presence of the photographer is felt in each of the portraits that Trivier creates:

"Ce qui m'intéressait, ce n'était pas de photographier simplement un corps ou un visage, mais cette situation particulière qui est quelqu'un en train de faire la photo de quelqu'un d'autre." ["What interested me was not simply photographing a body or a face, but this particular situation which is someone in the process of taking a photo of someone else."] (Marc Trivier).

Large original black and white photographic portrait by Marc Trivier.
Original unsigned silver gelatin print, like most of Trivier's works.
Precious original silver gelatin proof by the celebrated Belgian photographer, one of the most secretive contemporary artists, who despite early international success, preferred to limit his production to preserve the coherence of his work. Marc Trivier does not make new prints of his older portraits, and the printing paper he used is no longer commercially available. The artist "makes his own prints on Ilford baryta paper, devoting several days of work to each one, with particular concentration on rendering the whites, in contrast with blacks of rare density. A Marc Trivier print resembles no other. When he agrees to exhibit them, he hangs them in stainless steel frames of his own making, giving free rein to the life of the paper." (Xavier-Gilles, "Marc Trivier et la tragédie de la lumière" ["Marc Trivier and the tragedy of light"] in Le Monde Libertaire, 2011). This "life of the paper" participates in the work in the same way as the various alterations that photographs undergo when they are exhibited: "Dans les boites, les tirages gondolent, mais qu'importe : le photographe affectionne ce genre d'accident." ["In the boxes, the prints buckle, but it doesn't matter: the photographer is fond of this kind of accident."] (Claire Guillot, "Les face à face sans échappatoire du photographe Marc Trivier" ["The inescapable face-to-faces of photographer Marc Trivier"], Le Monde, 2011). Marc Trivier has a particular sensitivity for the material aspect of his productions. While photography is essentially about multiples, this intervention by the artist in the entire creative process gives an autographic aura to these prints.


Photographs of artists, madmen, trees or slaughterhouses, Marc Trivier approaches all these subjects with a gaze as precise as it is intense.

"Dans sa cosmogonie, chaque chose, chaque être, végétal, animal ou humain, mérite le même respect. Car tous sont confrontés à la même loi d'airain : la solitude." ["In his cosmogony, every thing, every being, plant, animal or human, deserves the same respect. For all are confronted with the same iron law: solitude."] (Luc Desbenoit).

The beauty that emanates from his photos comes from this nakedness. There are no retouching, no cropping. In his work we find the same square format emphasized by the square of the negative that Trivier leaves on his prints. This frame traps our gaze in photographs where the makeup of color is rejected for an incisive black and white. With all artificiality having disappeared, we are not facing the staging of a subject but a presence exacerbated by the radiating and singular light, witness to an instant of life and not of posing. It is this light, linked to the photographic medium, that unites Marc Trivier's series:

"Les photographies de Marc Trivier écrivent une tragédie de la lumière, celle-ci n'accueillant les êtres - hommes, arbres ou bêtes - qu'en les brûlant, avant disparition." ["Marc Trivier's photographs write a tragedy of light, which welcomes beings - men, trees or beasts - only by burning them, before disappearance."] (Xavier-Gilles in Le Monde Libertaire).

It is also this light, freed from all artifice, that gives his works the aura that makes them so present. This "burning" of light brings us back to a real instant, to Barthes' "ça a été" ["that has been"] (La Chambre Claire, 1980):

"De trente-cinq ans de pratique photographique, d'obsessions, c'est peut-être ça qui reste : un mode d'enregistrement singulier de la brûlure de la lumière, décliné d'une image à l'autre, en une succession de propositions qui se ressemblent et pourtant chacune est aussi singulière que la fraction de temps auquel elle renvoie." ["From thirty-five years of photographic practice, of obsessions, perhaps this is what remains: a singular mode of recording the burning of light, declined from one image to another, in a succession of propositions that resemble each other and yet each is as singular as the fraction of time to which it refers."] (Marc Trivier).

"La photographie ne dit qu'une chose : « C'était. » On ne fixe que ce qui a été. S'il y a une tragédie, elle est là." ["Photography says only one thing: 'It was.' We only fix what has been. If there is a tragedy, it is there."] (Marc Trivier)

Warhol, Foucault, Beckett, Dubuffet... the greatest writers and artists have posed for Trivier. Simultaneously the artist also takes interest in the margins of society, in what men do not want to see. He then photographs the alienated and slaughterhouses which he places alongside celebrities. From the end of the 1980s his work is unanimously recognized and he receives the prestigious Young Photographer Award from The International Center of Photography in 1988 as well as the Prix Photographie Ouverte (Charleroi). After the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the Musée de l'Elysée in Lausanne and the Casino in Luxembourg, the Maison Européenne de la photographie in Paris devoted an important retrospective to him in 2011.



The photographs of the great personalities of his era that Marc Trivier creates do not seek to show the public image of these artists. Taken face-on, with a gaze directed toward the lens, they show us an image of intimacy:

"(...) au lieu d'être un portraitiste d'écrivains et d'artistes parmi tant d'autres, il se marginalise par son dispositif : sous prétexte de réglages, il fait attendre ses modèles, il les fait poser plusieurs minutes ce qui leur donne un air las. Il attend peut-être un comportement plus naturel. Et on se retrouve face à Francis Bacon en équilibre précaire, Samuel Beckett, Jean Dubuffet ou encore Michel Foucault plus ou moins tassés sur leur chaise. Des images intimes." ["(...) instead of being a portraitist of writers and artists among so many others, he marginalizes himself through his approach: under the pretext of adjustments, he makes his models wait, he makes them pose for several minutes which gives them a weary air. Perhaps he is waiting for more natural behavior. And we find ourselves facing Francis Bacon in precarious balance, Samuel Beckett, Jean Dubuffet or Michel Foucault more or less slumped in their chair. Intimate images."] (Sylvie Rousselle-Tellier, "Une image de fatigue chez Marc Trivier" ["An image of fatigue in Marc Trivier"], Marges 2004).

Photographed in their personal universe, most often their bedroom, the subjects abandon themselves, no longer control their image. The resulting imbalance reveals the fragilities of these strong personalities, and allows Trivier to restore the unity of the intimate body and the public work.

"Je lisais Genet ; pour moi Genet, c'était des lettres sur un livre. Et puis un jour j'ai vu son portrait, il y a eu comme une fracture. Comment était-il possible que ces signes soient aussi quelqu'un ? Faire un portrait, c'est ressouder le nom et le visage." ["I was reading Genet; for me Genet was letters on a book. And then one day I saw his portrait, there was like a fracture. How was it possible that these signs were also someone? Making a portrait is rewelding the name and the face."] (Marc Trivier).

More than a portrait, each photo is the testimony of an exchange between the subject and the artist, of an instant of real life. The presence of the photographer is perceptible in each of the portraits that Trivier creates:

"Ce qui m'intéressait, ce n'était pas de photographier simplement un corps ou un visage, mais cette situation particulière qui est quelqu'un en train de faire la photo de quelqu'un d'autre." ["What interested me was not simply photographing a body or a face, but this particular situation which is someone in the process of taking a photo of someone else."] (Marc Trivier).

Large original black and white photographic portrait by Marc Trivier.
Original unsigned silver gelatin print, like most of Trivier's works.
Precious original silver gelatin proof by the celebrated Belgian photographer, one of the most secretive contemporary artists, who despite early international success, preferred to limit his production to preserve the coherence of his work. Marc Trivier does not make new prints of his older portraits, and the printing paper he used is no longer commercially available. The artist "makes his own prints on Ilford baryta paper, devoting several days of work to each one, with particular concentration on rendering the whites, in contrast with blacks of rare density. A Marc Trivier print resembles no other. When he agrees to exhibit them, he hangs them in stainless steel frames of his own making, giving free rein to the life of the paper." (Xavier-Gilles, "Marc Trivier et la tragédie de la lumière" ["Marc Trivier and the tragedy of light"] in Le Monde Libertaire, 2011). This "life of the paper" participates in the work in the same way as the various alterations that photographs undergo when they are exhibited: "Dans les boites, les tirages gondolent, mais qu'importe : le photographe affectionne ce genre d'accident." ["In the boxes, the prints buckle, but it doesn't matter: the photographer is fond of this kind of accident."] (Claire Guillot, "Les face à face sans échappatoire du photographe Marc Trivier" ["The inescapable face-to-faces of photographer Marc Trivier"], Le Monde, 2011). Marc Trivier has a particular sensitivity for the material aspect of his productions. While photography is essentially about multiples, this intervention by the artist in the entire creative process gives an autographic aura to these prints.


Photographs of artists, madmen, trees or slaughterhouses, Marc Trivier approaches all these subjects with a gaze as precise as it is intense.

"Dans sa cosmogonie, chaque chose, chaque être, végétal, animal ou humain, mérite le même respect. Car tous sont confrontés à la même loi d'airain : la solitude." ["In his cosmogony, every thing, every being, plant, animal or human, deserves the same respect. For all are confronted with the same iron law: solitude."] (Luc Desbenoit).

The beauty that emanates from his photos comes from this nakedness. There are no retouching, no cropping. In his work we find the same square format emphasized by the square of the negative that Trivier leaves on his prints. This frame traps our gaze in photographs where the makeup of color is rejected for an incisive black and white. With all artificiality having disappeared, we are not facing the staging of a subject but a presence exacerbated by the radiating and singular light, witness to an instant of life and not of posing. It is this light, linked to the photographic medium, that unites Marc Trivier's series:

"Les photographies de Marc Trivier écrivent une tragédie de la lumière, celle-ci n'accueillant les êtres - hommes, arbres ou bêtes - qu'en les brûlant, avant disparition." ["Marc Trivier's photographs write a tragedy of light, which welcomes beings - men, trees or beasts - only by burning them, before disappearance."] (Xavier-Gilles in Le Monde Libertaire).

It is also this light, freed from all artifice, that gives his works the aura that makes them so present. This "burning" of light brings us back to a real instant, to Barthes' "ça a été" ["that has been"] (La Chambre Claire, 1980):

"De trente-cinq ans de pratique photographique, d'obsessions, c'est peut-être ça qui reste : un mode d'enregistrement singulier de la brûlure de la lumière, décliné d'une image à l'autre, en une succession de propositions qui se ressemblent et pourtant chacune est aussi singulière que la fraction de temps auquel elle renvoie." ["From thirty-five years of photographic practice, of obsessions, perhaps this is what remains: a singular mode of recording the burning of light, declined from one image to another, in a succession of propositions that resemble each other and yet each is as singular as the fraction of time to which it refers."] (Marc Trivier).

"La photographie ne dit qu'une chose : « C'était. » On ne fixe que ce qui a été. S'il y a une tragédie, elle est là." ["Photography says only one thing: 'It was.' We only fix what has been. If there is a tragedy, it is there."] (Marc Trivier)

Warhol, Foucault, Beckett, Dubuffet... the greatest writers and artists have posed for Trivier. Simultaneously the artist also takes interest in the margins of society, in what men do not want to see. He then photographs the alienated and slaughterhouses which he places alongside celebrities. From the end of the 1980s his work is unanimously recognized and he receives the prestigious Young Photographer Award from The International Center of Photography in 1988 as well as the Prix Photographie Ouverte (Charleroi). After the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the Musée de l'Elysée in Lausanne and the Casino in Luxembourg, the Maison Européenne de la photographie in Paris devoted an important retrospective to him in 2011.



The photographs of the great personalities of his era that Marc Trivier creates do not seek to show the public image of these artists. Taken face-on, with a gaze directed toward the lens, they show us an image of intimacy:

"(...) au lieu d'être un portraitiste d'écrivains et d'artistes parmi tant d'autres, il se marginalise par son dispositif : sous prétexte de réglages, il fait attendre ses modèles, il les fait poser plusieurs minutes ce qui leur donne un air las. Il attend peut-être un comportement plus naturel. Et on se retrouve face à Francis Bacon en équilibre précaire, Samuel Beckett, Jean Dubuffet ou encore Michel Foucault plus ou moins tassés sur leur chaise. Des images intimes." ["(...) instead of being a portraitist of writers and artists among so many others, he marginalizes himself through his approach: under the pretext of adjustments, he makes his models wait, he makes them pose for several minutes which gives them a weary air. Perhaps he is waiting for more natural behavior. And we find ourselves facing Francis Bacon in precarious balance, Samuel Beckett, Jean Dubuffet or Michel Foucault more or less slumped in their chair. Intimate images."] (Sylvie Rousselle-Tellier, "Une image de fatigue chez Marc Trivier" ["An image of fatigue in Marc Trivier"], Marges 2004).

Photographed in their personal universe, most often their bedroom, the subjects abandon themselves, no longer control their image. The resulting imbalance reveals the fragilities of these strong personalities, and allows Trivier to restore the unity of the intimate body and the public work.

"Je lisais Genet ; pour moi Genet, c'était des lettres sur un livre. Et puis un jour j'ai vu son portrait, il y a eu comme une fracture. Comment était-il possible que ces signes soient aussi quelqu'un ? Faire un portrait, c'est ressouder le nom et le visage." ["I was reading Genet; for me Genet was letters on a book. And then one day I saw his portrait, there was like a fracture. How was it possible that these signs were also someone? Making a portrait is rewelding the name and the face."] (Marc Trivier).

More than a portrait, each photo is the testimony of an exchange between the subject and the artist, of an instant of real life. The presence of the photographer is perceptible in each of the portraits that Trivier creates:

"Ce qui m'intéressait, ce n'était pas de photographier simplement un corps ou un visage, mais cette situation particulière qui est quelqu'un en train de faire la photo de quelqu'un d'autre." ["What interested me was not simply photographing a body or a face, but this particular situation which is someone in the process of taking a photo of someone else."] (Marc Trivier).

Set of 8 small-format portraits of Michel Foucault by Marc Trivier.
Original unsigned silver print, like most of Trivier's works.
Precious original silver print by the celebrated Belgian photographer, one of the most secretive contemporary artists, who despite early international success, preferred to limit his production to preserve the coherence of his work. Marc Trivier does not make new prints of his old portraits; the printing paper he used is no longer commercially available. The artist "makes his own prints on Ilford baryta paper, devoting several days of work to each one, with particular concentration on rendering the whites, in contrast with blacks of rare density. A Marc Trivier print resembles no other. When he agrees to exhibit them, he hangs them in stainless steel frames of his own making, allowing free rein to the life of the paper." (Xavier-Gilles, "Marc Trivier et la tragédie de la lumière" in Le Monde Libertaire, 2011). This "life of the paper" participates in the work just as much as the various alterations that photographs undergo when exposed: "In boxes, the prints buckle, but what does it matter: the photographer is fond of this kind of accident." (Claire Guillot, "Les face à face sans échappatoire du photographe Marc Trivier", Le Monde, 2011). Marc Trivier has a particular sensitivity for the material aspect of his productions. While photography is essentially multiple by nature, this intervention by the artist in the entire creative process confers an autographic aura to these prints.


Photographs of artists, madmen, trees or slaughterhouses, Marc Trivier approaches all these subjects with a gaze as precise as it is intense.

"In his cosmogony, each thing, each being, plant, animal or human, deserves the same respect. For all are confronted with the same iron law: solitude." (Luc Desbenoit).

The beauty that emanates from his photos comes from this nakedness. There are no retouches, no reframing. We find in his work the same square format emphasized by the square of the negative that Trivier leaves on his prints. This frame traps our gaze in photographs where the makeup of color is rejected for an incisive black and white. All artificiality having disappeared, we do not face the staging of a subject but a presence exacerbated by radiating and singular light, witness to an instant of life and not of pose. It is this light, linked to the photographic medium, that unites Marc Trivier's series:

"Marc Trivier's photographs write a tragedy of light, which welcomes beings - men, trees or beasts - only by burning them, before disappearance." (Xavier-Gilles in Le Monde Libertaire).

It is also this light, freed from all artifices, that gives his works the aura that makes them so present. This "burning" of light brings us back to a real instant, to Barthes' "that-has-been" (La Chambre Claire, 1980):

"From thirty-five years of photographic practice, of obsessions, perhaps this is what remains: a singular mode of recording the burning of light, declined from one image to another, in a succession of propositions that resemble each other and yet each is as singular as the fraction of time to which it refers." (Marc Trivier).

"Photography says only one thing: 'It was.' We only fix what has been. If there is a tragedy, it is there." (Marc Trivier)

Warhol, Foucault, Beckett, Dubuffet ... the greatest writers and artists have posed for Trivier. Simultaneously the artist is also interested in the margins of society, in what men do not want to see. He then photographs the insane and slaughterhouses that he places alongside celebrities. From the end of the 1980s his work is unanimously recognized and he receives the prestigious Young Photographer Award from The International Center of Photography in 1988 as well as the Prix Photographie Ouverte (Charleroi). After the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the Musée de l'Elysée in Lausanne and the Casino in Luxembourg, the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris devoted an important retrospective to him in 2011.



The photographs of the great personalities of his time that Marc Trivier makes do not seek to show the public image of these artists. Taken face-on, with a gaze directed toward the lens, they show us an image of intimacy:

"(...) instead of being a portraitist of writers and artists among so many others, he marginalizes himself through his approach: under the pretext of adjustments, he makes his models wait, he makes them pose for several minutes which gives them a weary air. He perhaps waits for more natural behavior. And we find ourselves face to face with Francis Bacon in precarious balance, Samuel Beckett, Jean Dubuffet or Michel Foucault more or less slumped in their chair. Intimate images." (Sylvie Rousselle-Tellier, "Une image de fatigue chez Marc Trivier", Marges 2004).

Photographed in their personal universe, most often their bedroom, the subjects abandon themselves, no longer control their image. The resulting imbalance reveals the fragilities of these such strong personalities, and allows Trivier to restore the unity of the intimate body and the public work.

"I was reading Genet; for me Genet, it was letters on a book. And then one day I saw his portrait, there was like a fracture. How was it possible that these signs were also someone? Making a portrait, it's rewelding the name and the face. " (Marc Trivier).

More than a portrait, each photo is the testimony of an exchange between the subject and the artist, of an instant of real life. The photographer's presence is perceptible in each of the portraits that Trivier makes:

"What interested me, it wasn't simply to photograph a body or a face, but this particular situation which is someone in the process of taking a photo of someone else." (Marc Trivier).

Large original black and white photograph by Marc Trivier.
Original unsigned silver print, like most of Trivier's works.
Precious original silver print by the celebrated Belgian photographer, one of the most secretive contemporary artists, who despite early international success, preferred to limit his production to preserve the coherence of his work. Marc Trivier does not make new prints of his old portraits; the printing paper he used is no longer commercially available. The artist "makes his own prints on Ilford baryta paper, devoting several days of work to each one, with particular concentration on rendering the whites, in contrast with blacks of rare density. A Marc Trivier print resembles no other. When he agrees to exhibit them, he hangs them in stainless steel frames of his own making, allowing free rein to the life of the paper." (Xavier-Gilles, "Marc Trivier et la tragédie de la lumière" in Le Monde Libertaire, 2011). This "life of the paper" participates in the work just as much as the various alterations that photographs undergo when exposed: "In boxes, the prints buckle, but what does it matter: the photographer is fond of this kind of accident." (Claire Guillot, "Les face à face sans échappatoire du photographe Marc Trivier", Le Monde, 2011). Marc Trivier has a particular sensitivity for the material aspect of his productions. While photography is essentially multiple by nature, this intervention by the artist in the entire creative process confers an autographic aura to these prints.


Photographs of artists, madmen, trees or slaughterhouses, Marc Trivier approaches all these subjects with a gaze as precise as it is intense.


"In his cosmogony, each thing, each being, plant, animal or human, deserves the same respect. For all are confronted with the same iron law: solitude." (Luc Desbenoit).


The beauty that emanates from his photos comes from this nakedness. There are no retouches, no reframing. We find in his work the same square format emphasized by the square of the negative that Trivier leaves on his prints. This frame traps our gaze in photographs where the makeup of color is rejected for an incisive black and white. All artificiality having disappeared, we do not face the staging of a subject but a presence exacerbated by radiating and singular light, witness to an instant of life and not of pose. It is this light, linked to the photographic medium, that unites Marc Trivier's series:


"Marc Trivier's photographs write a tragedy of light, which welcomes beings - men, trees or beasts - only by burning them, before disappearance." (Xavier-Gilles in Le Monde Libertaire).


It is also this light, freed from all artifices, that gives his works the aura that makes them so present. This "burning" of light brings us back to a real instant, to Barthes' "that-has-been" (La Chambre Claire, 1980):


"From thirty-five years of photographic practice, of obsessions, perhaps this is what remains: a singular mode of recording the burning of light, declined from one image to another, in a succession of propositions that resemble each other and yet each is as singular as the fraction of time to which it refers." (Marc Trivier).

"Photography says only one thing: 'It was.' We only fix what has been. If there is a tragedy, it is there." (Marc Trivier)



Warhol, Foucault, Beckett, Dubuffet ... the greatest writers and artists have posed for Trivier. Simultaneously the artist is also interested in the margins of society, in what men do not want to see. He then photographs the insane and slaughterhouses that he places alongside celebrities. From the end of the 1980s his work is unanimously recognized and he receives the prestigious Young Photographer Award from The International Center of Photography in 1988 as well as the Prix Photographie Ouverte (Charleroi). After the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the Musée de l'Elysée in Lausanne and the Casino in Luxembourg, the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris devoted an important retrospective to him in 2011.
The photographs of the insane that Trivier made during the same period were deliberately mixed with those of artists during the 2011 Paris retrospective. Far from an attempt to oppose madness and genius, this juxtaposition was instead the occasion for questioning our gaze on these two fantasmatic poles of the human person.


The series devoted to slaughterhouses might seem distant from Trivier's other works. However, like the insane, slaughterhouses are part of these shameful images of a marginality that we do not want to see. It is a place rejected outside the city, far from gazes, far from men. There are moreover almost never men in these photographs.
Contrary to Franju's film, Le Sang des bêtes, in 1949, Trivier is not interested in the gesture of work in slaughterhouses. He captures them empty, populated by cadavers or animals blinded before being led to death. The photographer draws inspiration from Bacon's painting, whom he moreover photographed in 1981, and from the latter's relationship to the body. We find all the pity of the English painter for meat and animals in Trivier's series.


"I have always been very touched by images relating to slaughterhouses and meat, and for me they are closely linked to everything that is the Crucifixion... It's certain, we are meat, we are potential carcasses. If I go to a butcher, I always find it surprising not to be there, in the place of the animal... " (Francis Bacon in Francis Bacon. Logique de la sensation, by Gilles Deleuze).


His photos show us beasts as martyrs like Marsyas or Saint Peter. Trivier reveals the tragedy of the body dispossessed of presence, photographing blind, dead, butchered animals drained of their entrails that black and white changes into marble. But it is always man who is reflected in these portraits of flesh without souls, a man who, through Marc Trivier's silver mirror, projects himself into this blind flesh, and crosses for an instant the infinitesimal space of the gaze that separates them.


"The cows regularly photographed by Marc Trivier at the Anderlecht slaughterhouse manifest the same essence as his human faces." (Henri Van Lier "Le timbre photonique, Robert Frank et Marc Trivier", in les cahiers de la photographie 1992)

Large original black and white photograph by Marc Trivier.
Original unsigned silver gelatin print, as with most of Trivier's works.
Precious original silver gelatin proof by the celebrated Belgian photographer, one of the most secretive contemporary artists, who despite early international success, preferred to limit his production to preserve the coherence of his work. Marc Trivier does not make new prints of his earlier portraits, and the printing paper he used is no longer commercially available. The artist "makes his own prints on Ilford baryta paper, devoting several days of work to each one, with particular concentration on rendering the whites, in contrast with blacks of rare density. A Marc Trivier print resembles no other. When he agrees to exhibit them, he suspends them in stainless steel frames of his own making, giving free rein to the life of the paper." (Xavier-Gilles, "Marc Trivier et la tragédie de la lumière" in Le Monde Libertaire, 2011). This "life of the paper" participates in the work just as much as the various alterations that photographs undergo when they are exhibited: "In the boxes, the prints warp, but no matter: the photographer is fond of this kind of accident." (Claire Guillot, "Les face à face sans échappatoire du photographe Marc Trivier," Le Monde, 2011). Marc Trivier has a particular sensitivity for the material aspect of his productions. While photography is essentially multiple, this intervention by the artist in the entire creative process gives an autographic aura to these prints.


Photographs of artists, madmen, trees or slaughterhouses, Marc Trivier approaches all these subjects with a gaze as precise as it is intense.


"In his cosmogony, each thing, each being, plant, animal or human, deserves the same respect. For all are confronted with the same iron law: solitude." (Luc Desbenoit).


The beauty that emanates from his photos comes from this nakedness. There are neither retouching nor reframing. We find in his work the same square format emphasized by the square of the negative that Trivier leaves on his prints. This frame traps our gaze in photographs where the artifice of color is rejected for an incisive black and white. With all artificiality having disappeared we are not facing the staging of a subject but a presence exacerbated by the radiant and singular light, witness to an instant of life and not of pose. It is this light, linked to the photographic medium, that unites Marc Trivier's series:


"Marc Trivier's photographs write a tragedy of light, the latter only welcoming beings - men, trees or beasts - by burning them, before disappearance."" (Xavier-Gilles in Le Monde Libertaire).


It is also light, freed from all artifices, that gives his works the aura that makes them so present. This "burning" of light brings us back to a real instant, to Barthes' "it has been" (La Chambre Claire, 1980):


"From thirty-five years of photographic practice, of obsessions, perhaps this is what remains: a singular mode of recording the burning of light, varied from one image to another, in a succession of propositions that resemble each other and yet each is as singular as the fraction of time to which it refers." (Marc Trivier).

"Photography only says one thing: 'It was.' We only fix what has been. If there is a tragedy, it is there." (Marc Trivier)



Warhol, Foucault, Beckett, Dubuffet... the greatest writers and artists have posed for Trivier. Simultaneously the artist is also interested in the margins of society, in what men do not want to see. He then photographs the insane and the slaughterhouses that he places alongside celebrities. From the end of the 1980s his work is unanimously recognized and he receives the prestigious Young Photographer Award from the International Center of Photography in 1988 as well as the Prix Photographie Ouverte (Charleroi). After the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the Musée de l'Elysée in Lausanne and the Casino in Luxembourg, the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris devotes an important retrospective to him in 2011.
The photographs of the insane that Trivier made in the same period were deliberately mixed with those of artists during the 2011 Paris retrospective. Far from an attempt to oppose madness and genius, this juxtaposition was on the contrary the occasion for questioning our gaze on these two phantasmatic poles of the human person.


The series devoted to slaughterhouses might seem distant from Trivier's other works. However, like the insane, slaughterhouses are part of these shameful images of a marginality that we do not want to see. It is a place rejected outside the city, far from gazes, far from men. There are moreover almost never men in these photographs.
Unlike Franju's film, Le Sang des bêtes, in 1949, Trivier is not interested in the gesture of work in slaughterhouses. He captures them empty, populated with corpses or animals blinded before being led to death. The photographer draws inspiration from Bacon's painting, whom he moreover photographed in 1981, and from the latter's relationship to the body. We find all the English painter's pity for meat and animals in Trivier's series.


"I have always been very moved by images relating to slaughterhouses and meat, and for me they are closely linked to all that is the Crucifixion... It's certain, we are meat, we are potential carcasses. If I go to a butcher's, I always find it surprising not to be there, in the animal's place..." (Francis Bacon in Francis Bacon. Logique de la sensation, by Gilles Deleuze).


His photos show us beasts as martyrs like Marsyas or Saint Peter. Trivier reveals the tragedy of the body dispossessed of presence, photographing blind, dead animals, dismembered and emptied of their entrails that black and white turns to marble. But it is always man who is reflected in these portraits of soulless flesh, a man who, through Marc Trivier's silver mirror, projects himself into this blind flesh, and for an instant crosses the infinitesimal space of the gaze that separates them.


"The cows regularly photographed by Marc Trivier at the Anderlecht slaughterhouse manifest the same essence as his human faces." (Henri Van Lier "Le timbre photonique, Robert Frank et Marc Trivier," in les cahiers de la photographie 1992)

Portrait of Andy Warhol. Original photograph printed by the artist Large original photograph portrait in black and white, made and printed by Marc Trivier. Unsigned silver print, as most of Trivier's works. Unique print from the artist. Small stain on the upper margin.
Artists, madmen, abattoirs, trees – Marc Trivier photographed each of his subjects with the same interrogative intensity. All his photographs are in the same square format, simple and confined, with no retouching or alteration of the framing, and seem less to show off a subject – famous or unknown, in or out of power, dead or alive – than to seek out a presence.
“Thirty-five years of photographic practice, obsessions, this is maybe what remains; a singular recording mode of light burning, from one picture to the other, in a series of proposals looking alike, though each one as singular as the fraction of time it refers to” (Marc Trivier).
Marc Trivier takes facial photographs of figures from the eighties. The subject looks right into the lens. These are not portrait star photographs, but they are the result of a will of desacralisation:
“Instead of being a writer's or artists' portraitist among many others, he marginalises himself with his device: under the pretext of settings, he keeps his models waiting, he makes them pose several minutes, which gives them a worn look. Maybe he expects a more natural attitude. Here is Francis Bacon in a delicate balance, Samuel Beckett, Jean Dubuffet or even Michel Foucault, more or less sagged back in their chairs. Intimate pictures.” (“Picture of tiredness at Marc Trivier's”, S. Rousselle-Tellier, in Marges, 2004).
Most of the time photographed in their personal space, the subjects loosen up, no longer mastering their image. The resulting unbalance reveals these figures' frailties and allows Trivier to render the unity of the intimate body and the public artworks.
“I was reading Genet; to me, Genet was letters in a book. And then one day I saw his portrait, and there was like a rupture. How could it be possible that these signs were also somebody? Making a portrait is reuniting the name and the face” (Marc Trivier).
Many items seem to oppose Warhol and Trivier. Andy Warhol is the artist of the multiple. His art was born from the metamorphosis of the consumerist artificial and mocks the proliferation of the identical. Marc Trivier is an adept of rarity, and each one of his photographs comes down to some rare prints, all differing in time and the artist's prints. Andy Warhol knows the importance of image, which even ends up replacing the individual. He knows people play roles and this is the image he captures. His various series on Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe or Mao show the transition to the icon status which makes these human beings immortal, and destroys their humanity to change them into pieces of art. On the other hand, Trivier's photographs strengthen the presence of an unwieldy body the artist cannot get rid of, an obstacle to sacralisation.
Warhol's known photographic clichés, faithful to his spirit, represent him either as a rock star, proudly wearing his perfecto and sunglasses as his protégé Lou Reed, or as an eccentric artist with his tousled hair, or simulating a boxing match against Basquiat. Each one of his photographs is a clever exposure of his character, pushed to excess, image of his own image, which the modern icon master fully controls.
Warhol's photography made by Marc Trivier shows a complete different person. Unbalanced by a slight low-angle view, projected on a black canvas behind him, cutting out the scene in a triptych, Andy Warhol's body seems to emerge from this dark background, whereas his legs and heavy boots, slightly oversized by the shooting, take pride of place in the foreground.
Surprised by the lengthy wait Trivier imposes to his models, Andy Warhol surprisingly stares at the viewer, as if he were caught in the act of idleness. This feeling is enhanced by the artist's crossed fingers.
Unique portrait of an artist who wanted “to be plastic” and who reveals through Trivier's eye his part of intimacy and fragile humanity of a body without artifice.

Original black and white photographic portrait of Bram Van Velde by Marc Trivier. Portrait of artist, of anonymous figure, of madman, of slaughterhouse or of tree: Marc Trivier photographed each subject with the same interrogative intensity. All realized in the same square format, elementary and closed, without retouching or cropping, the photographs seem less to stage a subject - famous or unknown, elected or fallen, living or dead - than to question a presence. "What interested me was not simply to photograph a body or a face, but that particular situation which is someone in the process of taking a photo of someone else." Trivier strips the work of its effects and reveals the enigmatic nudity of the photographic body. "In his cosmogony, each thing, each being, plant, animal or human, deserves the same respect. For all are confronted with the same iron law: solitude." (Luc Desbenoit in Télérama, 05/03/2011 on the occasion of the Marc Trivier retrospective at the Maison Européenne de la Photographie). Silver gelatin print unsigned, like most of Trivier's works. Unique proof printed by the artist. Fold marks and corner creases, some pale marginal stains at foot not affecting the photograph. Extremely rare photograph in very large format by one of the most important contemporary photographers.

[Photography] Marc TRIVIER
(Hans HARTUNG)
Portrait of Hans Hartung. Original photograph of the artist
By the author, sl 1982, 22x22cm on Ilford paper 30x40cm, a sheet.
Large original photographic portrait in black and white directed by Marc Trivier.
Original unsigned silver print, like most of Trivier's works.

________

Portrait of Frank Auerbach. Original photograph of the artist
By the author, sl 1981, 18x18cm on Ilford paper 24x30, a sheet.
Original photographic portrait in black and white by Marc Trivier.
Original unsigned silver print, like most of Trivier's works.