Éric PoitevinJe plumerai les canards en rentrant

“Je plumerai les canards en rentrant” (I’ll pluck the ducks when I get home) was published in response to an invitation from the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon, which asked Éric Poitevin to “enter into conversation” with its collections (exhibition from the end of April to the end of August 2022). However, this book is not intended as an exhibition catalogue, but opens up the photographer’s career and fascinating universe. How is an image created? What happens before a photograph leaves the artist’s studio? Often fantasized, the studio is a place surrounded by an aura of mystery. Like an alchemist, the artist would dose different potions to make an image come to life. With “Je plumerai les canards en rentrant” (I’ll pluck the ducks when I get home), an allusion to his love of cooking, Éric Poitevin generously introduces the reader to the world of his studio by offering a sort of diary, the result of two years of interior work that documents, through text and image, the creative process. He reveals the influences that his readings or the images of others may have had on his work. The book opens with an interview between Éric Poitevin and Jean-Christophe Bailly, which allows us to grasp his path to art, his journey as a photographer as well as his artistic intentions. The artist has then selected extracts from his correspondence, which shed light on his relationship with galleries and museums, his relations with his contemporaries (intellectuals and critics), his affinities with the territory that surrounds him, and his role as a teacher. The book also contains a large selection of photographs from his personal collection, which reveal both his historical interest in the medium and his generous attention to his contemporaries. Finally, eight new series of photographs by the artist are reproduced.