The photographer has exceptionally puts himself on stage to tell four shots drawn from his solo expeditions.
by Catherine Pacary
A frail silhouette crosses the snowy immensity, a huge telephoto lens under the arm, which fails to unbalance it at each step. “You have frozen eyelashes, says a male voice, while appearing the childish face lit with great clear eyes of Jeremiah Villet. You are magnificent.” Indeed, despite the – 20 ° C ambient, the young 29 -year -old photographer Irraded: He has been living in his passion for ten years, animal photography.
Another enthusiast of images, journalist Laurent Delahousse had already received it in December 2020 for the first snow release (oak). Jérémie Villet returns this time in “1:15 pm, Sunday” as heroes of a miniserie whose four short episodes, broadcast following, each relate the story of a photo, and lead the viewer in an amazing dream waking up .
White paradise the aptly named … The “trips” here are not chemical but provoked by shoots of a wild nature, “beautiful, hostile and at the same time incomprehensible”, says the one who tries to transcribe it since childhood by his shots, in a quest for absolute, perfection.
To such an extent that he keeps only three or four per year – never retouched, he puts a point of honor, barely reframed – on the hundreds made during his three months of expeditions ‘Winter in Norway, Finland, Canada… always alone. Until he agreed to leave exceptionally accompanied by director Marc de Langenhagen. This appears in the polar fox (episode 1), which opens on preparations in the Ile-de-France family farm.
scrutinize a sign of life
Very quickly, the singularity of the young man appears, both in the Yvelines and refrigerated beyond the polar circle. “He may end up doing something since we have been waiting for a long time,” calmly assures Jérémie Villet. The spectator then finds himself scrutinizing the screen, in search of a black point sign of life, a photograph.
Each episode contains its own twists and turns, which we will not disclose here. Just we can indicate that the episode the wolf of the Yukon (region located in Canada) is filmed in … The Alpine Massif of Oisans (Isère), and that the designer Jean-Marc Rochette, “artist of the wild”, It plays an essential role there, since its charms will, under the dictation, give life to the repressed memories of Jeremiah Villet; That of the moment when, in front of the animal, the “bizarre life” of the photographer finally took on meaning; and that of the next moment, of absolute sadness.
The other two episodes use fictional scenes. Thus in the deer of my childhood, which returns to the origin of the vocation of the photographer: the young actor Théophile Combe (perfect casting) interprets Jérémie at 12 years old. Also in the island to the rabbits, to give flesh to the meeting, in 2015, with Arthur, romantic character with the destiny worthy of James Bond.
Six years later, back on this Norwegian island covered with variable hares. Jérémie Villet is again “turned upside down”, he says, intoxicated: “I hesitated to live here, but I told myself that it is something to end badly. If you live happy in a place like that, you No more alone and … are you happy, but is that enough? No? “This time again, Jérémie Villet returned.