Théâtre d'ombres (2019) Photography by Jerome Bergami

Jérôme Bergami is a French photographer and writer, adventurer and lecturer of Breton and Italian origin, born in 1974 in the suburbs of Paris. After studying Modern Literature, he went to live in Brittany where he studied the Breton language and Celtic civilization. He collaborated with various newspapers, joined a poetic circle, gave recitals in Finistère and became a radio columnist in the Breton language. For ten years, he will undertake a long and patient work of reconquering his roots, his identity.

From 2003, he multiplies the experiences of travel and writing around the world. In 2007, he published a first novel, I would like to go back so much , then in 2009, a second, The impostor of Alexandria . Alternately teacher in Egypt, seasonal worker, sex shop employee, mortuary agent, caregiver, he seeks, through this unusual journey, to touch as closely as possible the key axes of human existence: education, sexuality , illness, old age, death, mother earth. In parallel, travels and writing continue: Kosovo, Albania, Russia, Mongolia, China, India, Bangladesh, Laos, Guyana.

In 2013, he created with his wife the association La Terre en Marche, a cultural, photographic, literary, educational and sporting action carried out in response to the major issues that are upsetting our contemporary societies. This action leads them to take the road exclusively on foot to meet peoples and cultures.

The photo comes naturally to his writing work, in 2014, during the first expedition carried out along the Silk Road, 6000 km on foot from Venice to the gates of China. It imposes itself as a singular and irreducibly complementary means of expression.

Jérôme Bergami's photographic approach reflects his literary approach: iconoclastic, sometimes subversive. Both address the question of Man and the three Links: the link to our identity, the link to the earth, the link to the universe.

Jérôme Bergami will develop the Artrine concept. He becomes a photographer of the refuge: body and soul, earth and sky, constantly questioning our humanity in its existential anxieties and its bursts of hope from the latrine holes that arise along the roads. He works on the figure of the hole, the flaw, the split. "I was born with holes", wrote the poet Henri Michaux. The artist shows the lack, the absence which is in us, sources of our torments.

The series of latrines he exhibits come from Central Asia and East Africa. They represent a primitive, rock art, totemic art which, in a double movement of attraction and repulsion, engenders mystery and poetry. The universe they form is as much metaphysical as plastic, visual as interior and their strength comes from the fact that they summon with equal intensity the emotion and the intellect, the irrational and contemplation.

Jérôme Bergami lives in Avignon (France).

• Nationality: FRANCE
• Date of birth : unknown date
• Artistic domains: Works by professional artists,
• Groups: Professional Artist Contemporary French Artists