André Glucksmann

Interview Date: 1994-09-14 | Runtime: 0:21:47
TRANSCRIPT

Speaker Yes, a take. It took three years. Because I don’t like to be photographed.

Speaker And, uh, Nicole Vishniac say that she’ll run for the angriest to do some picture.

Speaker But I don’t like I am white. I’m not a movie star.

Speaker But she saw me, uh, many photos of I’ve done. And after all, I go also to go to New York.

Speaker And to to make a for my son. I want to raise my son. And he was never in New York.

Speaker So he was very pleased to see the city.

Speaker Do you see that differential, you will say that in French?

Speaker Do you do you remember the first photographs that Nicole showed you? Dick’s work number two.

Speaker I knew before the photograph of Beckett. And I mean, I think it’s a very full photograph. It is in a variety of Beckett and Betty.

Speaker It did give me no impulse to be photographed because I never think I am a man like he.

Speaker I don’t know whether you know Beckett, but you know his work. Yes, of course. That you think that caught in that photograph of Beckett, which you said was verité.

Speaker The the being between life and death, but he is not alive and he’s not dead.

Speaker In fact.

Speaker And it’s like he’s waiting. I ask. I’ve done how we do that. And he say that it was exceptional because it was an instant any.

Speaker How do you say that spontaneously? Yes.

Speaker Not like he do in these rock. He has one second to make the picture and he take it.

Speaker It’s a knack.

Speaker Do you remember the city itself?

Speaker Yes, because I think it’s a miracle, not because I’ve ever done a bit of bickett because he was exactly as he walked.

Speaker And the essence of it. I just want to get up that people haven’t read back.

Speaker What is it that you see in that picture? That’s so true to the man, the writer that he.

Speaker He’s not exactly as in a place. He’s beginning to live. And that means also in the beginning of the death hit at the marsh.

Speaker He could be deaf in one second after. And that kind of moment is unfranked. Kid better. I’m Bosshard and think, man.

Speaker And very difficult to say is.

Speaker In your sitting. What are your memories of that city and how did directed you and shaped it?

Speaker I think he has an idea of the thinkers, which is a very strong idea. I walked a book up and the thinkers of the 19th century like Neach, Marx and Hager and I add the name of that book was the master of Thinkers. Yes. And he had the same idea of the thinkers.

Speaker Ask tongue very imperia person.

Speaker You say he writes in. Yes. But the government, in fact, dogmatic a little bit very strong with.

Speaker I’ve actually my family.

Speaker Mm hmm. And he say to me that I must have my hands closed to be an adjunct.

Speaker And it’s not my style of life.

Speaker And I think he photographed his own idea of a thinker. But he saw my son and he had the idea of putting together. And so in that moment, he threw away his pay day thinking. His conception. Conception. Yes. Of the thinker. And he saved something much, much more intense.

Speaker And it’s the life and death. I am going today. And my son is protecting my life. And he’s leaving. He’s going to lie. And I am going to death.

Speaker And that kind of, uh, strategy and, uh, coordination is what I often.

Speaker So in the picture I’ve done, you know, uh, Greek philosopher Sade.

Speaker And when we are alive. Death is not. And when death is. We are normal. And that kind of contradiction, I think, is a phone our way when you buy.

Speaker By the the meat of photography. The photography. Uh, in his, uh, reality show.

Speaker Uh, is the meat of, uh, saving life as life and death as death.

Speaker That is, uh, what never happens, because human beings are being you know, that they are going to death and, uh, they are not completely we live and they are not completely dead.

Speaker And the Furter give from then a picture normally, which is completely alive. Oh, competitive. And, uh, what is the rock to jump off. And then it’s to counter that meat of photography that is to give death in life and life in death.

Speaker And I think it he. Photography is an impossibility that we are that impossible. And, uh, I was not for him. An impossibility.

Speaker I was there thinkers. What he found. I think to. Should be. And what you don’t like. In fact, he’s much more. Because he knows that I think will speak for eternity. He’s also.

Speaker And then dead. We can become dead.

Speaker And so when the photograph thinkers, he’s much more than the thinkers. He know that thinkers are in immortality.

Speaker That is in eternal life. And he gave something more. That is death. And they he find that to raise my son.

Speaker It was not necessary to give. By the photograph of the death. Because he was the death. Rather the third person in the.

Speaker And he photograph not my son, not I, but that does. And wives between us.

Speaker Could you describe yourself a little bit? No, when you said no. Only in relation to what you don’t see in that photograph. When you said.

Speaker After after, uh, the photography, we eat together and we discuss and often say to me, perhaps I was wrong. Saying, You must make your hand so because you are more open.

Speaker Yes. And I think that he saw that. And that is the reason why he would say to my son to come to the fore.

Speaker Also because you make pleasure to the son. Of course.

Speaker But it was an openness in in his idea of the thinker.

Speaker Kind of you may need zation if you give out to reduce organization, the sense of mustardy zation with fingers in his I.D. are immortality being immortal?

Speaker Fingers.

Speaker And the fact that my son was here gave me a kind of night of mortality. I don’t know if my English is an understatement.

Speaker Wonderful. Nine. I just got just a little bit of what you were talking about, this idea of what you felt was the truth of and what was really what he was looking for and what you thought was true about the duality of it and also what you felt wasn’t true about it regards to you.

Speaker In French security, it could GC a photograph, I think, wholly incorrect, right? It could prompt a quick copy, uh, remeet, curvy, crude, less photograph content photograph than murder. Exergy to boot. Lucrative parfait.

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Speaker Denovo, just the usual key SCV grooviest, your dreamier is reproval the city. You know, Gress, I could be good too shady beyond what I saw. I’ve done Keat.

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Speaker Do you call them on the post says hey remember the.

Speaker My only request I understood at all is could you try and say the last part about the bowl? People forget it. It’s not a caricature and it is. It finds its literary equivalent in that last scene.

Speaker English in English is wonderful.

Speaker Yes, I think that I’ve done in photography, not life, not death, that the handover of the two. Yes. And you can see that in in the battle Volpi. In fact, it’s a photographic career. It’s an equivalent of a post. Idaho shall be compelled to at the end post all to come and see a battle with people that he know.

Speaker But he’s No. From many years and it don’t know if they are young or old.

Speaker And you see the same on the photograph here of Avidan. So it’s a it’s like a the only illustration that I could imagine to post.

Speaker At the very beginning, you were talking about something that you were talking about, the fashion photography and how there’s even death is in its attention to surface.

Speaker Is there’s death in that as well. Could you develop that?

Speaker I would say that he his technique is to be excepts excessively fascher neighbor benefaction.

Speaker And so if fashion become something excessive, that is very fragile, very marto later.

Speaker And it give not to you the impression of publicity. That is eternity of joy. But it gave you the feeling that something could happen. We would finish the world. It’s apocalyptic fashion.

Speaker That’s a good thing because people struggle to find the connection between these portraits of Mark and tragic in this world of fashion that celebrates surface. And I think you’re talking about the connection between the two dark tragic.

Speaker Yes. You can find the connection Renney photograph for. They is a kind of footedness, you say, from this planet to fully join me now, fully.

Speaker Madness. Madness.

Speaker Yes, he gave photograph of mad.

Speaker But there is some kind of madness inflation in in in a six billion way of of doing. Yes. And you find the same madness by people in the south.

Speaker And in fact, the problem is that no one of the fool of the fashion people and of the West and little people out here to be photographed. Photography is a. Of death on people who don’t care. Of photography.

Speaker Just his article, only photograph. One other thing I would say in fashion.

Speaker He make too much and that too much is the point where people were photographed.

Speaker No more star, but became Morten’s.

Speaker That too much star so that they can something else.

Speaker And you’re also saying that that extraordinary beauty in the fashion photographs, we sense it’s precariousness.

Speaker Yes, in that sense, a bootlegger, French bread to translate. And Dan and Paul say the same opened the prickliness.

Speaker The agility of artificer beauty and fashion is artificial beauty.

Speaker So if one could do say something intelligent, opened photography of have done open fashion, you you must find it in layer.

Speaker I’d like to talk just a moment about the ISIL photograph and the ways in which the same idea about my forces present in that photograph.

Speaker Yes, I think he has the idea of intellect training, which is not food today. But he was phoo in the 19th century where intellectual, very high voter Chinnery or Gauvin Montano tyrannic. But alway they were very strong, very distinctive, very authoritarian. And he has that idee, not datti. He think he loved that, Dedee, but I don’t think so because when seen then when photograph a feeling, then he makes some kind of contestation of context.

Speaker Yes, he is. And so it’s a dialogue between the I.D. he has. That is the fingers of the 19th century, the master fingers and the I.D. he like. In fact, it’s and his idea is not that of strongness of oteri tion. It’s the idea of fragility. And the harsh reality of this tone is what you see at the end. From that kind of dialogue. So either Balin is not only authoritarian, he is also malter in the photograph. And there is some kind of contradiction not of steadiness. Stick and TEUs. Yes. You are not. And to stick the authoritarian image is not that he do. I’ve done the authoritarian image would be of some social and really stick. So yet painting it is not that what you have done has done.

Speaker He he’s the way you’re photographing is a ray of contestation station.

Keywords:
American Archive of Public Broadcasting GUID:
1963381327
MLA CITATIONS:
"André Glucksmann , Richard Avedon: Darkness and Light" American Masters Digital Archive (WNET). September 14, 1994 , https://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/archive/interview/andre-glucksmann/
APA CITATIONS:
(1 , 1). André Glucksmann , Richard Avedon: Darkness and Light [Video]. American Masters Digital Archive (WNET). https://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/archive/interview/andre-glucksmann/
CHICAGO CITATIONS:
"André Glucksmann , Richard Avedon: Darkness and Light" American Masters Digital Archive (WNET). September 14, 1994 . Accessed September 9, 2025 https://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/archive/interview/andre-glucksmann/

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