Biography
Self-taught, Marc Sommer began his photographic work in 2007.
Turning resolutely away from computer photomontage, it is by means of patiently elaborated mechanical tricks that he manages to give his photos the surrealist atmosphere that characterizes them.
For him, photography is a family affair. It is with his father Richard, visible below perched on the ladder, that he creates machinery and staging. He also relies on his son Froment, whom he makes his favourite model.
For years, without ever showing it, he elaborates a work in the course of the absurd, at the same time gentle and grave.
It is the photographer Laurence Demaison who, in 2015, pushes him to exhibit his work.
Marc Sommer is represented in France by the Esther Woerdehoff Gallery, Paris.
Peines perdues
Armed only with his imagination, and without ever yielding to the facilities of digital collage such as Photoshop, Marc Sommer offers us singular, improbable photos. Endowed with a strong symbolic charge, they are as many parables - voluntarily disturbing, even disobliging.
In an eminently personal tone, this photographer depicts the human condition, bluntly but not without tenderness. For it is indeed empathy that nourishes his artistic approach. And if his images conjure up despair, it is for the sole purpose of bringing out unsuspected poetry
Diverse but coherent, his work forms an essay on the difficulty of being, where the emphasis on humour reminds us of Nieztsche: "And let every thought in which a laugh does not burst out be declared false."
Narcisse M.
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