I have been a huge admirer of Alain’s images for 15 years and I know of several photographers and artists who share my sentiment. The images of his that I love are in his Black Mirages body of work that he shot in Africa. I find his captures to be inspiring and his collages to be, especially, provocative. I’ve included a few of his collages here, but feel free to check out the rest of his works here and here!
The following are paraphrased excerpts from his bio…
He is not a photographer but, as he is pleased to say, he goes in for photography. For he combines the technique of the professional with the original joy of the dilettante. In the proper meaning of the term: Italian word, present participle of “dilletaro”, “delight”, hence “the one who practise an art for love”. For the pleasure of the photographic art or rather of the “photografrica” art. Because Alain Paris unceasingly puts this continent in images.
What he shows us of Africa is truly unique. In full modesty, and very subjectively, he attempts to reveal to us its very beauty. That of its women, of whom he shows the stare, the skin, the hands, the muscles…
Yes, Alain’s Africa, is unique. It is woman, mother or mistress, naked, strange and sensual. With Black Mirages, he gives us to see the most beautiful and most evident of what Africa undoubtly has, but that which no one can describe. A stomach. The fertile one of a mother or the stretched skin of a dancer? Hands. The ones of an Ashanti princess of Ghana or of a Diola countrygirl of Casamance? The nape of a neck. The one of an amazon warrior of Congo or of a parisian model? Suppleness of bodies, frankness of a stare, raw purity of Africa to which these “Black Mirages” send us back.
True lover of a female Africa that he locked in his darkroom, he invites us to only see her beauty and campaigns, in his own way, and better than others maybe, for her survival.
this dude is a beast! beautiful work!