Bernard Faucon: the Most Beautiful Day of My Youth February 16, 2011

From 1997 to 2003, the Provence-born artist Bernard Faucon produced an unprecedented new series of photographic works: 'Le Plus Beau Jour de ma Jeunesse (The Most Beautiful Day of My Youth).' His earlier imagery, extremely personal mise-en-scenes, consisted of atmospheric tableaus of nature and interior spaces and dream-like restagings of a romanticized and idyllic childhood, mostly set in non-urban settings. This focus was then abruptly supplanted by a more epic and universal project. The execution of 'Le Plus Beau Jour de ma Jeunesse' involved artistic collaborations with young students from around the world (twenty-five countries and up to one hundred adolescents in each locale), using disposable cameras to create collective dreamlike tableaus. For the most part, Faucon continues his exclusion of the urban landscape in this new series. To make 'Le Plus Beau Jour de ma Jeunesse,' Faucon staged one-day celebrations at twenty-five international sites. He then transformed himself into the conductor of a photographic orchestra so as to share his unique vision with young people around the world. He says: "From Morocco to Japan, from Burma to Cuba, from Cambodia to Sweden ... it seemed to me that this image of youth in the world resembled the festive and playful atmosphere of Happiness Regained, my first staged photographs taken twenty years before." Whereas Faucon's initial post-existential photographic vision was highly poetic, arcane, and always on an intimate scale, it became, in 'The Most Beautiful Day of My Youth,' expansive, collaborative, cinematic, and ubiquitous. It is a primer for the future use of the medium.