* (restored)
‘Firework Studies is a book compiling photographs of fireworks in the night sky. By constraining nearly all tonal values to stark blacks and pure whites, the trails, explosions and clouds of debris are reduced to a series of simple repeated formal elements: arced lines, spherical bursts, and randomly dispersed particles. I made no effort to limit digital artifacts resulting from pushing the image files past their conventional range; the resulting noise becomes hard to distinguish from the texture of the fireworks themselves.’ — Pierre Le Hors
‘What happens if you drain the colour from fireworks? The sounds certainly don’t change. Pierre Le Hors decided to go with B&W; sketches for his Firework Studies and left them to their own abstract nature. The garish textures against a black background can now be anything they want: dandelions, galactic fog or palm tree tops. To some, fireworks have the same kitsch factor as sunsets. It may be fascinating when experienced live in person, wonderful and a song of colours. But the picture of it turns the moment into a sentimental, pathetic and unbearably inelegant instant. Yet, without the colours’ influence and by decontextualising the photographs from specific moments, locations or occasions, the light effects turn into self-contained visual sequences – full of magic.’ — Gosee
‘Firework Studies was published in an edition of 500 copies by Hassla books ($35, ISBN 9780982547151, New York City), an independent publishing company with a focus on art and photography. Hassla specialize in publishing small, low-run artist books that feature the work of both emerging and established artists, always working one-on-one with the artists to create a publication that evokes the very essence of the artist’s focus. This intimate process, coupled with Hassla’s simple aesthetic, allows for an interior view into the artist’s work.’ — get addicted to
Interview
Firstly, whereabouts are you from? What’s your background in photography?
I was born in France, but my parents moved away when I was 3 years old and we lived on sailboat for a number of years. We traveled a lot – in Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean – so my childhood was somewhat unusual, I guess. In ’91 – 92 we settled in Florida, where my parents found work and I was put in the American school system. I attended public schools in Florida, eventually studying art at Florida State University. I was initially interested in painting, but as a studio art major we were required to take a foundation photography course, where we were taught the basics of working in a black and white darkroom. I was encouraged to continue with photography, and somehow I guess it stuck…I do still enjoy drawing though. After moving to New York, 11 years ago, I found work assisting commercial photographers, which taught me a lot of technical skills (working in the studio, lighting, and so on. It took some years, but eventually I realized I wasn’t interested in seeking out commercial jobs so I decided to focus on my artwork again. More recently I attended the ICP-Bard MFA program, a 2-year master’s level study for artists working with photography.
What challenges have you had to overcome as an artist regarding the edit, layout and publication process?
Making publications, first of all, is very costly. So whenever I’ve made publications, self-published or otherwise, its been about finding ways to work within the limitations of modest means. Usually those limitations turn out to be helpful in moving the project along a particular path, and finding freedom within those contraints. In my opinion the importance of editing and layout in carrying meaning can’t be overstated. I try not to set limits on what I allow myself to photograph, so one challenge for me is that almost any image has the potential to be imbued with multiple meanings. These decisions usually come down to editing and layout, which thankfully I’ve gotten better at with time. I’ve learned, for example, that it’s much easier to edit by printing images, rather than looking at them on a screen…
Do you have any all time favorite photo-books?
“Desert Cities” by Aglaia Konrad
“East Broadway Breakdown” by Christopher Wool,
The “Wako” books of Wolfgang Tillmans
“Der Baum” by Erik van der Weijde
“Visible World” by Fischli / Weiss
“The Destruction of Lower Manhattan” by Danny Lyon
and too many books to mention from Roma Publications…
Fireworks can trigger a mixture of sensibilities! What interests you most about them?
It’s a very generic subject. Fireworks ride a thin line between spectacle and banality.
Where in the world would you most like to visit?
Hard question! Probably Japan is near the top of that list.
What projects are you working on at the moment?
Shooting and editing for a collaborative publication project with Motto Distribution in Berlin. But it’s still very early so I can’t really say too much about it..
Finally, what’s the best film you’ve watched recently?
Andrei Tarkovsky’s “Nostalghia”.
Show
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p.s. Hey. ** darbz (¬ ´ཀ` )¬, Hi, D. Oh, gosh, I read ‘The Balcony’ so long ago that I don’t remember. I do think his novels are much better than his plays in general. I haven’t read your novel piece yet, but it’s on the horizon. But I like superfluous. Well, or in your case, I’m sure I would. It’s possible ‘Pinocchio’ is his best, but a bunch of his other films are total fun. ** Dominik, Hi!!! Score, sure, of course. The image on the poster is in danger of making the film look like a horror movie, which it most definitely is not, but it’s the only one they proposed that didn’t make us want to tear our hair out, so … It’s true that season 3 is sort of something else. Nasty comment, for sure, but the hot dog thing is on the clever side of ugly at least. Of course love has the perfect body, yes. Love realising that his right jeans pocket has so much loose change in it that he walks with a slight tilt, G. ** jay, Hi, jay! Other of his movies are pretty terrif too if maybe not quite as terrif. Maybe. Pinocchio meets Dark Souls … what in the world is that? What’s been happening with you? Hopefully things that have non-stop perked you up. ** _Black_Acrylic, Haha. I really need to have a look at Dundee one of these days. ** Carsten, I’m trying to think of musician filmmakers and drawing a blank. Like who? I agree about their tastes though. In fiction too. I’ve been thinking about that death effect because of the Diane Keaton outpouring. I hadn’t seen anyone even mention her in years, and now it’s like everyone just lost their best friend. Part of it is undoubtedly about what one thinks/feels as opposed to chooses to vocalise, but still. Duende: bring it on, man. Cool, thank you! ** Steve, Glad that day is in the past at least. I’ve heard such awful reports about Jude’s ‘Dracula’. What thinks you? ** Bill, Oh, let me check. The Fukui post originally launched on January 1, 2020. That was lockdown time, I think? Thirwell is all over the place these days, but there’s always something kind of interestingly overblown about his stuff that I like. Maybe it’s just me, but I think Del Toro has really fallen off since the ‘Cronos’ days. You agree? ** Uday, He’s fun. I think you’ll have fun. I’m not sure if there’s ‘Action Kylie’ poems in there — you can check — but there’s a lot of recordings of Kevin reading on the great Pennsound site here. ** HaRpEr //, Ah, then I’ll start my The Last Dinner Party hunt today then. Thanks. Fukui is worth testing out, for sure. You were in/on L’Etranger too! When my family first discovered my writing and what it was about, their response was to act like it didn’t exist and never ask about that and grow very uncomfortable whenever the subject came up. My dad only mentioned my writing twice. One time he told me that if he had pursued writing he would have been a better writer than me. And another time when we were having dinner with a bunch of people and the subject came up, he said, ‘Dennis’s writing is respected by his people’, by which I think he meant gays. Maybe that’ll happen with you? Could be worse. I saw that they’re selling or auctioning some of Welch’s art. It is odd that no one has adapted ‘IYIP’ for film. It would undoubtedly do an injustice to the novel, but strange that no one has tried, as far as I know. ** Nicholas., Hard writing is the best fun in the world. That might just speak to how unfun the world is, I don’t know. I did like school, but really mostly just because of the friendships made there. Best day? Hm. Probably and kind of predictably the time I read something I wrote to a school assembly in, I think, 9th grade, and my fellow students went wild for it, and I thought, Maybe I really am a writer. Favorite teacher … probably this teacher Mr. Benton who was queer and did drugs with my friends and I and who taught Latin and Russian and ended up shooting himself in the head in a classroom after school was over one day. Did I do that, the ‘wrong’ thing? Huh. I wish I could remember what the house was or wasn’t. ** Okay. Today my galerie asks you to look at the pages of an unlikely book. See you tomorrow.
Now available in North America 
We always associate fireworks with the Gunpowder Plot. Here in England we will burn an effigy of Guy Fawkes on Bonfire Night to celebrate the fact that he failed to blow up the Houses of Parliament back in 1605. Very much an anti-Catholic thing. Not very cool really.
I remember attending fireworks displays as a kid and I always associate them with the taste of toffee apples. Any associated book would have to include that sensory element or I would feel somewhat cheated.
I think I remember this one. I really like the book design with the wraparound cover.
That’s a hilarious quote from your dad, Dennis. 20 years ago my parents went to one of my gigs (the only time so far). They left in the middle, and my dad said afterwards, “you guys sound so angry”.
That Mr Benton story was pretty intense, geez.
Lockdown for Americans was probably March 2020. I think Fukui’s work was much harder to come by then, and it probably took me a few months. I had to score a probably bootleg DVD of Pinocchio, which I still own.
Totally agree with you about Del Toro. My favorites are Cronos, Pan’s Labyrinth, and Devil’s Backbone. Nothing else comes close. The craft is still there in his later hits, but I have zero interest in revisiting them. And while we’re on the subject of Pinocchio (!), did you see Del Toro’s? How was it? I couldn’t get excited about checking it out. We’ll see about Frankenstein.
Bill
Hi!!
What an exquisite book. Wow.
Has the designer (designers?) of the poster seen “Room Temperature”?
Ah, I know the feeling. We have a box for loose change, and somehow it’s always full.
Love getting addicted to the videos of a woman who visits extremely messy apartments and cleans them, Od.
Very interesting subject: an image’s transition to black & white, & what is lost, what gained in the process. I mentioned this before, but I have this optional version of my chapbook that features photos as accompaniments (rather than illustrations) to my poems. Initially these were snapshots taken here & there for fun & kept mostly in color, but then turning them b&w for a possible print book yielded some interesting results. A cloud-streaked sky for instance is a marvel in b&w, a sunset not so much. Or how only some skin translates beautifully to b&w.
Re. musicians making good filmmakers: the comment was prompted by the part in the Shozin Fukui interview where he talks about his generation being full of musician-filmmakers.
The reason I called it a pet theory is because I didn’t really have any major directors in mind, but rather some of the visual artists & hobby filmmakers I’ve encountered & observed directly—so not so much in the established, “professional” film world but in the margins (which often overlap with the music video, projection art & so on). In my experience, more often than not, when musicians pick up a camera they go at it with an approach that’s more intuitive, spontaneous & open to experimentation, while leaning more into mood, audiovisual texture & rhythm rather than plot, psychology & dramatic construction. Now I can think of some musician-filmmakers (van Peebles, Jarmusch, Kusturica, Boots Riley, Rob Zombie), but the comment wasn’t prompted by them. Though Riley (see “Sorry to Bother You”), to take the youngest, is actually a good example of what I’m talking about.
I really enjoyed DRACULA, although it’s messy and uneven by design. Like a lot of Eastern European artists, Jude filters his anger through dark humor, and he does it very well. It’s likely to be divisive – I’m surprised it could find a US distributor – but I think it’s worth catching. KONTINENTAL ’25 hasn’t opened here yet, but it’s sitting on my hard drive.
“If I pursued writing I would’ve been a better writer than you” is such an odd thing for a father to say to his son.
Have you started making plans for Halloween? If you’re invited to a costume party, who/what would you dress as?
MMM fireworks. Love em
I’m planning to go to the RT screening up in Ghent, my sister has a Halloween party on that day, so I might see about showing up in costume. I’m very excited to see the film and to see you and Zac. I’ve spent the past week up in England caring for my Granny, who’s dying and who keeps forgetting I’m not straight, so I’ve been kinda emotionally and verbally drained for the last couple of days. Been finishing up “Gravity’s Rainbow” first part, but my head has been in a different space, so I’m going through Jean Rhys “Good Morning Midnight” and Delany’s “Dhalgren” with some zeal. I really love the former so far, but I’m glad not to have read it before writing my own first novel, since I feel they are a bit too close in verbal execution.
I guess a lot has been kinda shitty lately, but we keep trucking.
BTW, I found a copy of “The Gates of Janus” by Ian Brady, and while perusing it, I was wondering if you had ever met Adam Parfrey. I know you know Peter Sotos, but Parfrey interests me because he cavorted around a lot of white supremacist types and seemed to indulge them a lot. But looking through everything he wrote, it seems kinda hard to parse what was sincere and what was mere shock jock antic. But it definitely seems like he had some kind of effect in sustaining a white supremacist underbelly that’s more prevalent now in the weird world of IRL and the internet. I wonder what he would’ve made of 764…
Anyway, I wish you the best.
PS: Would it be ok if I asked to cultivate a post for yr blog? I have some stuff I have ideas for, but nothing definite.
Hey,
Only back now (at 12:30am) after being up in Dublin to meet up with this one I know from Italy through twitter. Was lovely to actually meet him after spending so much time texting and talking with him whilst playing online. Weirdly I woke up sometime around 5:50am today… my three guesses are a) some noises outside, like binmen, woke me up [though I am a deep sleeper and am not woken up by those things], b) I naturally woke up because I’ve been trying to get up around 8am every day, or c) I’m coming down with some sort of cold or flu after potentially being out and about too much, and chainsmoking (I think it’s this one).
This is a really strange book, wow.
I was reading the interview and when he mentioned that he lived on a boat for a few years with his family traveling, I started to wonder if without that experience he would be the artist making a firework book… I think I’m exhausted from today and making strange connections in my head but I can’t get it out of my head. Obviously I can’t know as I haven’t lived his life or know the inside of his mind but the shift between the early years and then Florida highschool art class makes me interested in if the years of traveling helped to shape his artistic interests, if being in school was the start, and what would have happened had life been different. Would the desire to create still persist? I feel I sound like some stoner making something out of nothing right now, but I just am so fixated on that sailboat bit, and the small effects that every single day can have on us.
Also responding to the last time I was commenting, yes Jack Black plays Steve; I don’t know how much I like the idea of Steve being given a very large personality (especially when played by someone like Jack Black, who is already over the top). Ultimately though it’s just a video game movie made to make money and Steve is not a ‘character’ (if you can call him that) I hold close to my heart (though Minecraft definitely is…)
Hey. Yeah, I think my family will probably react like yours. English repression will make it so that it doesn’t have to come up that often, but since I’m the opposite of English repression and accidentally bring up crude anecdotes like, for example, that story about that guy who got fucked by a horse to death, or the time I worked at a cinema and had to kick out a guy for masturbating to a kids film etc., I get people riled up by mistake. But I’m generally expecting them to say that they found it confusing and odd and to leave it at that, if they in fact do ever read anything I write. They do have a way of gossiping in private about people rather than telling people how they feel about things.
Something really shocking and disturbing happened today. It’s a weird coincidence that I was just talking about my family but this actually concerns the other side who I get on better with. Essentially, the son of my cousin has gone missing, and from what I’ve heard, the main suspicion seems to be that he may have gone to meet somebody he met online. He’s 13 and is a trans boy and is this shy, introverted, and very sweet kid and I’m just in total shock seeing CCTV images online of someone I know in this context. I really just can’t believe it. I remember being an isolated kid going online and talking to strangers and creeps because nobody in my real life seemed that interested in anything I had to say, and so the whole thing is so terrible and I really feel for the poor kid. Obviously, he could have gone missing for any number of reasons, but that’s the only theory that’s been talked about so far. It’s crazy, because I was just saying to you the other day that missing persons cases have always fascinated me, but when you know someone that it happens to it becomes totally terrifying and nothing else. Language falls away. It’s so strange.
Hey Dennis! Fireworks are pretty neat, I go through phases of liking them or disliking them. Riding a “thin line between spectacle and banality” is a good way to put it- when I’m not excited about fireworks it’s usually because they make me feel overstimulated, understimulated, or both simultaneously. I’ve been kind of liking fireworks recently though, probably because my favorite band used to set them off on stage & it would make the vocalists snot run black. To me that’s genuinely adorable, I mean, trying to seem all badass and then making yourself sick for the whole performance. Oh yeah, thank you for the kind wishes regarding my health, I saw Connie commented the other day haha. I’m still sick as fuck but I’m healing, I just won’t be able to attend this film festival unfortunately.
Your writing has been of great comfort to me once again. Lately I’ve kind of been freaking out about the way I’m perceived by those who are attracted to me… it seems that even as I get older, guys continue to be weird about how young I look, and continue to want things of me I’d find emasculating or violating. They expect me to make exceptions for them, or see any preemptive boundary as a game I’m playing… I don’t want to generalize but whenever I let my guard down for a second I end up regretting it. While my mind continues to ruminate in the background (I don’t think it will ever be quiet haha), the numbness & apathy I’ve been feeling lately has been kind of interesting. Your books are really good for confronting that & getting some kind of catharsis.
The one plus side of having so many scary & disturbing experiences is that I’ve collected a lot of information I think I’m going to use for a zine- lots of collage material, lots of concepts for short stories and little charts/diagrams. I’m probably going to write it under a pen name though, just cause I’d have to be frank about things in my life I’m not really open to everyone about. If I follow through with this idea, I’ll be sure to send you a copy too if you want to have a look.
I miss commenting on your blog, I hope your day is goes well and your sinuses stay clear!