VOYAGEZ ICI
Biography
Benoit Lange was born in 1965 in Morgins, Switzerland, into a family of modest craftsmen. His parents never really traveled, and the first time they flew it was thanks to their son who took them to Calcutta.
After a peaceful and happy childhood in the mountains of the Valais, he followed for 6 years several training courses in the food trade: baker, pastry chef, cook and dietitian. His professional path was to continue towards training at the Lausanne hotel school.
Before starting this training, he took a sabbatical year to travel around the world. His meeting with Doctor Jack Preger changed his destiny. He became a humanist photographer and hired to testify and support the work of the street doctor. Having never sought to become a professional, it was initially with the intention of giving testimony that he composed his work from his first shots.
Impregnated entirely with the incredible city of Calcutta, he was as if magnetized by the city, even prevented from continuing his journey. "I have traversed this mega-city in all directions, nourishing myself as much of its beauty as of its sufferings. Laughing and crying with it over its broken humanity, hoping that one day it would revive from its ashes. I loved as much as hated. Even today she capsizes me. "
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I am often asked at what point in my career I opted for black and white photography and why.
I would like to point out that during my second trip to Calcutta, still far from thinking that I would one day become a professional photographer, I was equipped with nothing but a Nikon FM2, 5 colour films and 5 black and white films.
The mission I had given myself then was to take photographs of life at Dr. Jack Preger's clinic.
In my eyes, it was the best way to bear witness to the extraordinary work of the street doctor,
as well as the human reality, made of struggles and hope, of the patients of Middleton Row.
Discovered by winning first prize at the Arles Professional Days competition, I became a black and white photographer who has never stopped exhibiting and publishing books with the sole aim of supporting Calcutta Rescue projects.
After working for some time with the Gamma agency, I had to face the fact that my work was too slow to feed an agency approach: it lacked the news, the sensational. I returned dozens of times to Bengal, then to Ethiopia, to Burkina to know and understand my photographic subjects as best I could before immortalizing them.
For the needs of my commitments, I made three documentaries for television on the street doctor.
Throughout his life, the English doctor refused everyone permission to film him. But through persistence and friendship, after 25 years at his side, Benoit Lange obtained his trust and approval to make the only feature film about his life: Dr Jack.
Aujourd’hui plus que jamais Benoit Lange travaille la photographie en proximité directe dans des reportages difficiles et engagés.
Même si Calcutta a été le déclencheur de mon travail, finalement c'est comme si je m’étais fondu dès ce moment dans une approche de l’humain qui allait me combler.
La proximité de corps est toujours de mise. Pour être dans l’image avec mon sujet, je tiens l’appareil sur ma poitrine afin de permettre à nos regards de rester dans la lumière de l’échange. En effet, je ne porte jamais d’appareil photo en bandoulière, c’est par une dragonne au poignet que je manie l’appareil, ainsi il semble être une prolongation de ma main.
Lorsque je marche dans les rues, ou sur les chemins, il n’y a alors pas d’obstacle technologique à la rencontre.
Photographic engagement
In a world so unbalanced where happiness and wealth are so badly distributed, we all play our part and have our share of responsibility. For the committed photographer, if you want to live happily in the northern hemisphere, you cannot live in oblivion of the south. Photographers, like artists, have a role - often even a leading role - to play. Photography is a vector of emotions and compassion.
My choice to avoid the miserable photography which inevitably calls for pity, has for primary goal to restore the human being in his dignity and his right to happiness. Gestures as simple as getting up to the subject by carrying his camera in his chest, giving him his gaze and his time go totally in this direction. When the right to the image, to testify, meets the right to the person, it is not always easy to make these two essential approaches meet. So in these cases I always ask myself the same question: would my subject feel betrayed if he saw himself in the photo I just took?
Where does the authorized intrusion in the intimate end, see the intimate suffering? During the years spent in street clinics I have regularly been faced with choices, ethical assessments to decide: photographic gesture or not? Am I allowed to take the photograph in what the subject lets me see at this moment? Is my right guaranteed by his only confidence in me?
When I speak of human and photographic immersion I necessarily go through the proximity step. The intimacy that allows you to receive the moments that are offered.
You don't cheat without zooming, you are naked in front of your subject.
I chose photography not as a goal but as a means of telling emotion and hope. My photos are the testimony of thousands of exchanges. If they deserve to be shown, they want above all to testify.
