baghir.com | About

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Nicolas Baghir Maslowski est né en France en 1974. Il a choisi pour nom d’artiste Baghir, le prénom de son grand-père russe, mort en 1917. C’est son père, écrivain, arrivé tout jeune en France, qui est à l’origine de sa passion pour la photographie en lui offrant un petit appareil photo. L’enfant, rêveur, se passionne pour l’image et par le prisme de l’objectif s’invente un univers.

Son autre passion, c’est la musique, sans doute sous l’influence de sa mère, claveciniste, et de son père, mélomane. Après l’obtention d’une maîtrise de Géographie, au début des années 2000, il passe du temps en Jamaïque, se lie d’amitiés avec plusieurs musiciens et fonde avec un ami le label Makasound/Inna de Yard, rééditant des chefs d’œuvres oubliés et introduisant Winston McAnuff en France. Les photographies de Baghir illustrent bon nombre des couvertures des albums. Le label rejoint un groupe et en 2013, Baghir fait le choix d’abandonner sa carrière dans la musique pour se consacrer pleinement à la photographie et poursuivre son projet artistique personnel.

Sa vision prend corps hors série, dans le flux « Pertubations numériques », fruit de quatre ans de recherches et de plus de 15 000 prises de vue. Ses images, tout à fait contemporaines, se réfèrent au mouvement pictorialiste. Il travaille en argentique, utilise des films 35 mm et fait réaliser ses tirages à l’agrandisseur. S’il choisit de ne pas donner de titre à ses tirages mais de leur attribuer une suite de chiffre (PN # 524-431, ou PNC pour les couleurs), c’est pour que ses photographies voilées conservent une part de mystère aux yeux du spectateur, qui se laisse porter dans cet univers poétique où la liberté de la nécessité d’une interprétation ramène à la beauté irréductible de l’image. « L’anonymat des titres renforce la possibilité pour chaque image de se créer sa propre personnalité à travers le regard des yeux généreux qui acceptent de s’y perdre et d’y trouver un instant précieux. »

Les images sont avant tout une étude de la beauté picturale, une recherche de la sérénité, un hommage à la peinture et à la photographie qui explorent la terra incognita du monde photographique onirique. « Avec mes perturbations numériques, j’essaye de m’approprier des beautés pour en rendre d’autres. »

Il fait ses débuts à la Fat Galerie / Sitor Senghor (Paris 2014) puis chez Swiss Art Space (Lausanne 2015), avant d’intégrer Photo12 Galerie (Paris 2015) qui après une exposition personnelle en décembre 2015, le représente à Photo L.A. 2016 et lors d’Art Paris 2016 où son travail est très remarqué. A l’été 2016 il a exposé à la Galerie Huit à Arles lors des « Rencontres d’Arles » en Juillet, puis à Los Angeles en Août, à Photo Shanghai en Septembre et à Art Elysées du 20 au 24 octobre. Pour clôturer cette année 2016, il expose à partir du 29 novembre à l’Alliance Française de Los Angeles.

Baghir (the middle name of Nicolas Maslowski) shows us facets of the world of which we never imagined the existence. For him, the perception of life is, in a way, blury.
Baghir, born 1974, has been experimenting with film photography since the age of eight, when his father (1914-1999), a Russian writer exiled in France, gave him a small camera. This dreamy child, captivated by images, took his camera everywhere. He photographed everything that came into sight, and after years through the lens he created some universes.

Another passion enthralled him: music. A passion undoubtedly nurtured by his mother (1942-2018), harpsichordist and poetess. After following all art options in highschool, he got an art history licence in University (Paris 1 – Sorbonne Panthéon) while getting hardly caught up by another passion : Geography. He got his Master of Cultural Geography at University (Paris 1 – Sorbonne Panthéon) in 1998.

As a freelance journalist and reggae melomane, he spent time in Jamaica in the early 2000s and befriended artists, many of whom had been forgotten. He founded a label (Makasound/Inna de Yard 2002-2012) and reedited a number of buried masterpieces Baghir’s pictures were often used as visuals for these albums. This label has since become part of a large record company. In 2013, the time had come for Baghir to writeanother page of his professional story, to achieve his photographic projects.

The artist realized his vision with the work of Numerical perturbations (PN titles for black and white photographies, and PNC for Color ones) after four years of research (2010-2014) and 15000 photographies. His images, quite contemporary, refer to the pictorialist movement in their painterly quality. He works with film and prints on silver gelatin paper, using the traditional process. Named only by number (for exemple PN # 467-736), the blurred photographs retain a sense of mystery in the eyes of the spectator, who often travels far in time and space to a place where freedom from the need for interpretation leads back to the image’s irreducible beauty. The images are a study of pictorial beauty, inspired by painting and black & white and color photography that explore the terra incognita of the photographer’s oneiric world through classical subjects such as trees, landscapes, flowers and feminine models. Influenced by Man Ray or Anselm Kiefer, as much as by Josef Kudelka or Claude Monet, he was also influenced by some contemporary painters such as Nicolas de Stael or Georges Mathieu; Baghir also expresses himself with some totally abscract photographies.

Since the early days of 2018, Baghir has developped a new style mixing his paitings and his photos while he shoots without postproduction. With the help of a glass the subject appears in the painting. He calls this new work Photographic Passports (titles PP # 2704) and does it mostly in color. This work has been shown for the first time in summer 2019 in Paris at Galerie XII; each piece is unique. The exhibition was exported to Beijing before Xmas but was unfortunatly cancelled for Covid19’s reasons. As his new exhibtion » Undercover » is happening right now at 59 Rivoli Gallery in Paris.

At the same time, Baghir is working on some new PN & PNC, and opening new visions, new perceptions in his » Room « , his 7 square meter atelier, as much as on the road all around France.

SOLO SHOWS
2020 | PARIS « Undercover » (with Jeanne Grihangne) | 59 Rivoli Gallery –Paris
2002 | SHANGHAI « Passeports » | POSTPONED for COVID19
2019 | PARIS « Passeports Photographiques » / (GXII) Paris
2018 | PARIS « Variations 2.18 » | Solo show / (GXII) Paris
2016 | LOS ANGELES (« Visions » exported) / Artists’s Corner Gallery (GXII)
2016 | ARLES « Visions » / Galerie Huit Arles
2015 | PARIS / « VISIONS » / Galerie XII (GXII)
2015 | PORTO (« Photographies ? ») / Days Are Gallery.
2015 | LAUSANNE (« Photographies ? ») / Swiss Art Space.
2014 | PARIS 6 / « Photographies 2 ? » / Galerie des Sans-Galeries, rue Mazarine. Solo show autoproduit.
2014 | PARIS 3 / « Photographies? » Fat Galerie / Sitor Senghor/ Juin / First exhibition.