Photography experienced as testimony and action. A work of memory taken from life, with monuments revisited, museums moved from one site to another in the twinkling of an eye, statues about to be flown off, but also ruined cities and faces, wounded places, suffering zones. Gérard Rondeau is as much a reporter of what lasts as a portraitist of the ephemeral. He knows how to grant time to the fleeting or dilapidate the centuries, grasp moments of stone, sculpt destinies. With him there are no décors and few actors, even in the theatre. He prefers backstage to onstage, rehearsals to performances, building sites to inaugurations. His images refuse any masking effect: their aim is to be beyond observation, siding with the simple revelation which measures the weight of the elements and the self-evidence of beings. His black-and-white world is a prism without a spectacle, in search of a secret light, a fear, an ancient murmur.

André Velter