Bernard Langenstein

His story

Born in 1952, Bernard LANGENSTEIN lives and works in Lyon – France.

“Influenced very early on by the visual image, I am the third generation of photographers in my family.

I love observing and exploring.

Photography is for me a personal and obsessive way to show quirky universes, industrial and everyday objects, which can be disturbing but which have a real utility.

One day, I came across these sculptures standing in the fields, these totem-like installations, these walls, sometimes chaotic, sometimes perfectly lined up, bringing out the character of the farmer who had shaped them, unconsciously creating fleeting works worthy of a contemporary artist.

One day a farmer told me: I like the fact that you are taking an interest in our work.” Bernard Langenstein

Creation Process

They lie there, piled up near the farms, laid out along the paths, lining the back of the fields, the edge of the woods, bestrewed, tangled up, boldly free, but yet strangely integrated into the landscape. Extracted from the soil itself and shaped by the farmer, these bales of silage take on the appearance of large supernatural fruit. But they can also be viewed as unquestionable visual statements and works of art in their own right since they innately possess the power of various contemporary architectural or sculptural works.

These fleeting and unreal apparitions have a true presence, an absolute aesthetic quality and an amazing poetic dimension. They seem to be bearers of a timeless and enigmatic truth.

It is all this, at the same time as this mysterious process of re-humanisation of acts of agricultural industrialisation, which fascinates the photographer, walker, visual artist and poet Bernard Langenstein.

He shares this vision with us through these sumptuous and enchanting images.

Pierre Souchaud. Artension.