Francois Pitot received the 2023 Denis Roussel Rfotofolio Award. We are pleased to share his work and words on Rfotofolio.

Would you please tell us about yourself?

My name is François Pitot. I was born in 1977 in Bayonne in the south of France, although my family is originally from the Hautes-Pyrénées. My parents had a taste for travel, and it was with them that I held my first camera to film my vacations.
I really took up photography in 2004, when my son was born. I’ve had the status of artist-author for two years, but I’ve also been a worker in the aeronautics industry for fifteen years, which prevents me from devoting myself entirely to photography. In my spare time, I go back to the Pyrenees to recharge my batteries. That’s where I find my
favorite subjects.

Click on images to see a different view.

In the Woods © Francois Pitot

Astugue Under the Fog © Francois Pitot

Please tell us about the portfolio you submitted to the Denis Roussel Award.

I have an iconoclastic way of working. I don’t have a pre-established plan, I don’t have a series in mind before I take my photos. As Pierre Soulages put it so well, “it’s what I do that teaches me what I’m looking for”. I came up with the idea of grouping bromoils under the name of “Winter Notes”, because they all had as their subject an ethereal nature lost in the mist. The winter season is the most prolific for me, when I capture the material for my work. That’s when the light is most interesting, as it transforms nature into a veritable sfumato. In this series, I wanted to render this hallucinated nature through light. It creates the poetic universe of the series. Nature ceases to be a backdrop and becomes lyrical, allowing us to become aware of ourselves.

This portfolio is true to who I am. As a manual worker, I practice attention to detail, patience and meticulousness. As an artist, my work is permeated by a concern for time, dreams and memories.

Please tell us about your process.

Bromoil consists in replacing a silver image with an inked one. This transformation offers a
change of style, losing the realistic detail of a conventional photograph to obtain an image
charged with grain, akin to drawing or painting. The various stages take place over several days. After developing the film, I make a print on silver gelatin paper. It is then chemically bleached. The silver image is erased. The gelatin in the paper hardens in proportion to the amount of light it receives. It is harder in blacks than in whites.
Next comes the inking stage, but before that, I soak the bleached sheet in a tray of water.

The paper’s gelatin swells and absorbs water in the whites, while the blacks remain dry.
When the greasy ink is applied, the fat is repelled in the waterlogged areas (whites) and
adheres in the dry areas (blacks). It’s the same principle as for engraving.
I then apply several thin layers of ink to the sheet, gradually revealing the original image.

This is the most time-consuming part of the work, but at the same time the most interesting, as I can reinterpret the image according to the amount of ink I deposit. I create different light sources, and modulate them to the point of erasing the shapes, bringing me much closer to the subtlety of a drawing that figures mystery and infinity.

What is the most frustrating part of the process?

The process is time-consuming. The final inking stage can take several days without being
sure of the result. I’m never sure of what I can get, and a good negative doesn’t necessarily make a good bromoil. I’m also dependent on photo paper manufacturers. Some models are no longer manufactured, forcing me to develop new techniques for inking the new paper on the market.

Do you enjoy the process itself or is it just a means to an end?

The inking stage is the most exciting. It’s here that I can interpret the image in the manner of a painter. I can spend several days on the same image, retouching it again and again until the result suits me. I take great pleasure in wielding brush and ink. However, the result takes on its full meaning once it’s finished. I realize that my work has a
particular aesthetic. All the technical work upstream is aimed at this single goal.

How long have you been practicing this process?

From the outset, I worked exclusively with analog camera, in the laboratory, and then gradually moved towards old processes. After a few years of experimentation, I found a balance by oscillating between two processes : wet plate collodion and bromoil. Theses two processes have totally different renderings. I first tried Bromoil ten years ago. It took me a year and a half to get my first inking right. Since then, I’ve been constantly improving my technique.

Do you have a mentor or a teacher that has helped your journey?

I’m a self-taught photographer, inspired by the great names of the early twentieth-century
Pictorialists. I was inspired by their techniques, but I’m working on inventing my own style.
I didn’t go to photography school, I just learn by reading a lot and exchanging ideas with contemporary photographers.

How do you work through times when nothing seems to work?

I’m persistent, I experiment a lot. And when I get stuck, I read up.
I often take a break to devote myself to wet collodion. At the moment, I’m working on a portfolio about nuclear power, because I’m very sensitive to environmental issues.

What part of image-making do you find the most rewarding?

“Veiled sun” is my most accomplished work. It contains the seeds of what I want to achieve in my future work. Simplicity to the point of subtlety is what I’m striving to perfect.
I used to overload my images, but now I realize that minimalism and subtlety are more
meaningful.

Frosted Landscape © Francois Pitot

What tools have you found essential in the making of your work?

Unlike some photographers, I own very little equipment. My main tool is a Leica MP camera, with which I collected the images for “Winter Notes”

Is there something in photography that you would like to try in the future?

There are so many techniques I’d like to experiment with, but I don’t have the time. I’m very
interested in pigment processes, photogravure and carbon printing.

What’s on the horizon?

I’m aiming for purity, and I find that it’s the most difficult thing in art to get to the essential. I
hope to develop my technique to the point of abstraction, and continue to question the link between art and reality.

For example, I’m currently reworking “Winter notes” to remove certain images and integrate new ones. I plan to exhibit this series. Developing my technique will certainly take several years, but I hope to see my work published someday.

Thank you. To learn more about the work of François Pitot please click on his name.