ABOUT FRIENDS
AESTHETICS OF COMPLICITY
If it was Hikaru Ushizima and Vincentb who decided to found the Chambre5 Collective, it was under the whimsical leadership of Charles Thomas and Jana Caslavska that it took an ironic turn. The genesis of the Chambre 5 Charter of Conduct became a snub to seriousness and a series of constraints for its members.
This charter which is unwritten (which allows discreet disobedience) but which was signed by each of us “in the air” during an epic night, subjects each member to personal constraints set before the amazed eyes of friends present. Very quickly we naturally only took photos under duress. A notebook allowed us to borrow any of the collective’s devices, mainly from Hikaru Ushizima’s collection. Often these constraints pre-existed the creation of the collective but they are reaffirmed during meetings where sausage, cheese and wine (black or white) take precedence over any serious enterprise.
From 2008 to 2022 partly exhausted, most of us produced almost nothing. Inspired by the College of Pataphysics we call this time “period of occultation”
The day we met Charles Thomas who was making images with his head buried in a cardboard box, we thought that it would be ingenious to set each of us a constraint in one form or another and to only show the work born from this restraint.
Some did not have to force themselves, Jana already worked from time to time with Olympus Pens in which you can hardly see anything! Because she is small it was already like holding a 6X7 camera! The younger Hikaru was already using medium formats sometimes, once old he decided to stick only to his old Hasselblad (his tendonitis as he likes to call it,) Ethan, burned by the loss of his archives, was thinking of a way to take everything with him, he turned into Ahasverus, the wandering Jew, this legendary character from medieval times, his tiny camera a Pilgrim’s stick as he walks the streets.
Vincent who took care of the darkroom and the website (at the time we had one) was exempt from this constraint, his daily life was more than enough and he never made anyone jealous. He even partially and sporadically switched to digital photography (10% of his work) and lost none of his friends.We are all moved by the obsession to record the banality of our streets, to exhaust reality as much as reality exhausts us. No escape, no beautiful trips to India, Thailand, Greece or China where photographers native to these countries take care of describing a stronger, more intense reality with intelligence and sensitivity.
We bonded together in the unspectacular, it’s our aesthetic of complicity.
CHARLES THOMAS
Photographer and drawer
Writing about Charles more than 25 years after his death remains a painful exercise. Born in Newquay, UK, Charles was truly the eccentric jolly fellow of the collective.”Why” was the word he probably used most often.
He constantly experienced a new way to enjoy doing pictures, he died during a photographic session.
JANA CASLAVSKA
Photographer
This Czech woman, born in Pribram in the heart of Bohemia was interested in photography at a very young age. On her 14th birthday her father offered her a camera. She never stopped to take pictures since. She strives to think of the order of the images when shooting like one arranges words in a sentence.
HIKARU USHIZIMA
Photographer and poet
Born in Fukuoka, in the south of Japan, He studied music in Japan then in Italy.
Coming from a wealthy family and cultured family in Arita. He is the oldest of the chambre 5 collective, but as he likes to repeat “not the most senile”. It was Florence his wife who had the idea of the collective name.
ETHAN LICHTENFELD
Photographer and traveller
Born in Kerhonkson,NY, he spent a part of his life in NYC. After a painful separation and the disappearance of all his negatives, he flew to Europe, then to Paris where he started from scratch. He considers him as a wandering jew like Ahasverus.
VINCENTB
Photographer
Born in Avignon, begun to do pictures at an advanced age. Like his friends he persists in working in the streets, photographing people in their natural space. Without any pompous ambition, he adopted what Godard wrote somewhere:” If you have a message to convey, use the post office”.
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