(On Time,” Jean-François Rauzier’sgargantuan 32-by-66-foot panoramacomposed of several hundred

seamless images of clocks, cliffs, buildingsand ocean, is emblematic of the hours uponhours Rauzier spends to capture, composeand edit each of his Hyper-photo dream-scapes. In the photo, a man in black standsalone amidst a beach comprised entirely ofclocks, thousands and thousands of clocks.The surrealist aesthetic of the image is

interesting in itself. But the truly amazingquality of the photograph lies in the hyper-realistic detail of it. The faces of the clocks,and there seems to be miles of them, caneach be read as if directly in front of you.It’s like staring into a finely detailed worldthat can never blur.

Collage“I agree that it may sound crazy,”

Rauzier explains when asked why hespends the inordinate time it takes to man-ufacture only a single Hyper-photo image,“but I’ve been a photographer, painter andsculptor for 30 years, exploring these dif-ferent techniques of expression up until2001. At that time, I began my Hyper-photo work and I haven’t needed to doanything else. I’m entirely satisfied. As aphotographer, I can use this powerful artmedium to capture reality. As a painter, I

Portf

olioThe Image Is In The

Jean-François Rauzier’s Hyper-photo composites are extraordinary in size, in vision and particularly in detail. Pushing his digital tools to their limits, he shoots, paints and sculpts his way to images that are marriages of technology and art.

By Dave Willis �� Photography By Jean-François RauzierDETAILS

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can control my image exactly and putwhat I want where I want. And as asculptor, I savor spending a long timeon my work, as a meditation, to havethe pleasure to approach, touch andfeel the texture, then back away to seethe entire work. Hyper-photo is acombination of all of these.”Each image thatRauzier assembles is

OPENING SPREAD: Rauzier talks about the motivation behind “On Time.”He says, “When I was a child, the beach called Étretat was made of hugewhite rocks that emitted a particular sound when clunking together. It wasdifficult to climb through them to reach the sea. Thirty years later, Ireturned. What a shock! These enormous stones, broken and ground bythe sea, had become mere pebbles. I had thought that rocks were eternal,at least in one man’s lifetime. But time erodes everything faster than werealize. Nothing escapes. The irony is that the alarm clock, the symbol oftime, fabricated infinitely like so many grains of sand, also ends updiscarded. In the middle of the beach, a sundial, my shadow, as brief andimmaterial as it is, will forever tell me the time. At least as long as the

a collage of between 600 to 1,000 indi-vidual close-up images, each taken oneby one, using a telephoto lens over aperiod of one to two hours. Once theentire scene is captured, Rauzier stitchesthem together using Photoshop, work-ing obsessively until the naked eye can’tdiscern where each piece of the imagebegins or ends.

The composited images are of enor-mous proportions, wall-sized photosthat you can almost walk into, literally,in the case of a recent exhibit at the LosAngeles Pacific Design Center, wherethree separate fabric prints of a Rauzierimage were printed in a successionof enlargements, mimicking the feel ofwalking into the symmetrical world of

sun shines and I remain standing.” THIS PAGE: “I dreamt up this city,”Rauzier says about “The Ideal Library,” as “an immense library with anopen sky, a place of peace and silence, of ideas and light, of differencesand tolerance, of confidences whispered in the ear. Pantheon where thosewho cradled my childhood meet, those who forged my conscience andthose to be discovered whose language I don’t speak. Cendrars,Hemingway and Kerouac pull me toward the open sea. Here, Poe, Carolland Maupassant tempt me to dark, fascinating waters. There, Baudelaireinvites me to travel where all is nothing but order and beauty…I dreamtup this city, a grand Noah’s Ark where we drift forever on a swell ofinfinite conversations.”

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the image. Each curtain was a door-way, opening to finer details thatweren’t easily noticeable upon firstinspection—antiquated pictures sub-merged in the water of a lake, a pic-nicking couple along a river bank, evendown to the texture of tree limbs andsingle blades of grass. The human eyeisn’t remotely able to capture the pre-cise details of each Hyper-photo.“No lens can give the perfect sharp-

ness in one photo,” Rauzier says,“from as close as 12 inches up to infin-ity, that I can achieve by assembling500 photos. It’s interesting to knowthat the details exist, hidden in the pic-

ture, as in reality. And during an exhi-bition, I exhibit cropped and enlargeddetails. People go alternatively to thepicture—and the details.”Rauzier wants the viewer to have

to decide whether the image is a pho-tograph or a painting, or both, insome cases, as in the “Ideal Library ofthe Senate,” where some of the librarypatrons are photographed as paint-ings of prominent literary figures.Thematically, his ideas and imagesform puzzles themselves.“I’m really dreaming awake—

sometimes sleeping in front ofmy com-puter, oui, oui! I go to bed and awake

always thinking about the image I’mmaking, as in a wonderful dream.During the long period of time it takesme to work onmy image, my imagina-tion is working, especially when I’msleeping in front of the computer, and astory is coming step by step.“Objects and people are telling

it,” he continues. “Some objects arerecurrent—snakes, apples, cats, roses,mystic or sexual symbols—things wehave in our unconscious minds.Always existential questions: Why arewe here? What must we do? Are weresponsible for the good and the bad?My recurrent themes are the original

sin, the innocence of a child that’s lostvery quickly and we don’t rememberexactly when and how.”

Puzzle Pieces“First I need large landscapes, fields

and deserts, other escapes,” Rauzierexplains. “Most of the time, a land-scape inspires me. I have an emotion,but I can’t really see how the finalimage will be. It’s very important toknow that because it was difficult forme at first. It’s exactly the opposite ofphotography. As a classic photogra-pher, I look in my viewfinder andshoot and I have my picture. In the

case of the Hyper-photo, in theviewfinder, I just see details. I triedevery wide-angle viewfinder as amovie director would, but it’s impossi-ble to have 360-degree vision; 180-degree viewfinders exist, but there’s somuch distortion that we can’t imaginethe result. So when I shoot, I havesome ideas, but I don’t know how itwill be in the end. It’s always an adven-ture, a discovery of a parallel world.”Adds Rauzier, “Now, I also explore

towns, industry, urban places—anygreat locations with a lot of details andmaterial to work with. For some pic-tures, such as the “Ideal Library of the

THIS PAGE: Rauzier’s “NYReservoir” composites hundreds ofsmaller images to form thisenormous cityscape panoramic.Rauzier offers this description ofthe image: “From high on myperch, I watch the silent city. Likean eagle, I see every detail. I takein the city as far as the eye cansee, ready to fly. I plunge into theapartments or into the heart ofCentral Park, fleetingly discoverstrangers. I feel their presencemore than see them…imaginingwho they are, what they’re doing,what they’re seeing. All in thesame instant…”

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THE IMAGE IS IN THE DETAILS

Senate,” “Latest News,” the very sur-realistic images, I have a very preciseidea before taking pictures and have tofind the location closest to my idea tocreate it. Some, like “NY Reservoir,”are by chance. I was invited to a partyand had a shock seeing the view fromthe flat. I just had to come back, shootand respect the reality, enhancing

some things, but changing very little.”Rauzier’s minute changes can be sig-

nificant, though. “To create my idealworld,” he says, “I remove whateversignifies human presence in order togive the landscape its original virginity,perhaps a quest for theGarden of Eden.In a landscape, I’ll try to re-create the original nature—timelessfields, even though planted by man,without ugly electric cables, houses,roads, cars—anything that was added

“For example, for “On Time,” Ishot the beach of Étretat one year ago.I knew I’d do something with it. Thisbeach, the atmosphere, and the shock Ihad in seeing how the stones had dis-appeared was so moving for me that Icouldn’t work on it before I had agreat idea. When a man showed mehis collection of alarm clocks, I hadsuddenly the idea for that image.”Even after completing an image,

for Rauzier, there’s no time to rest:

“When I finish an image, I’m veryfrustrated and depressed and need tostart another one immediately. I’llsoon show this work more often onscreens as slideshows or movies of theHyper-photos. It’s the only way to seeall the details and it’s a fascinatingtrip. And eventually technology maycatch up.” DPP

To see more of Jean-François Rauzier’swork, visit www.hyper-photo.com.

recently, except for the objects I add totell a story, to say something. Oftenabandoned objects, unexpected things.”At the same time that he’s remov-

ing things, Rauzier will place anynumber of photographically foundobjects, whatever he feels he needs tocomplete an image. Basketballs sitmotionless in a still desert, dogs floaton high-backed chairs along a shore-line, abandoned bicycles are strewnabout an otherwise abandoned road.Many of these he will shoot in the stu-dio, using amedium-format camera toavoid having to join together moreimages than already necessary.

Stitching“In order to achieve panoramic

images, I first tried panoramic camerasand wide-angle lenses,” Rauzierexplains, “but was frustrated by notbeing able to control the distortion andending upwith a very typical panoramicand wide-angle effects. I began to shootfour to 10 pictures and stitch themtogether. After Imastered the process, itbecame a constant buildup until it wasthousands of pictures.”Of his equipment, Rauzier says,

“I’ve used several cameras, mainlyFuji and Nikon. For studio work,I usually use the latest digitalHasselblad. Not using the same equip-ment all the time keeps me up withthe latest technological advances thatgo along with the Hyper-photo’s con-stant need for more precision andgrowth. I’m always looking for thebest equipment and am not tied toanything in particular.”Rauzier will use his Hasselblad in

the field when he can, but prefersto carry his SLR cameras when hetravels, as they’re lighter and lessexpensive. When shooting with thehigh resolution of a medium-formatcamera, Rauzier makes fewer expo-sures in the field, but due to theextremely detailed and time-intensivenature of his work, there’s still a never-ending struggle with the limitations oftechnology—restricted depth of field,blur due to the wind, flaring, etc.

“I shoot very systematically, shot byshot, with a graduated tripod,” saysRauzier. “I know that I’ve got the entirescene when I’ve shot all I can see! I tryto not forget any details, even withoutinterest, because when I skipped oversome areas that apparently held nointerest, I had holes in the image thatwere very hard to fill. It’s better to cap-ture everything, more than I need. Icarrymanymemory cards and fill themquickly. The files aremore than 30 to 40gigabytes for a flattened image. I haveno desire to be reasonable and reducethe size. I can’t. It’s a mutilation.”Continues Rauzier, “I use Apple

computers and Apple displays. I triedmany programs, but now I use onlyPhotoshop. It has many shortcomingsfor me, 3 GB of RAM maximum, butit’s the only one that canmanage the 30to 40 GB files I’m making now. I needa 1 terabyte scratch disk and will soonuse a RAID server. It works very slowlyon the hard drive, but it works.”Even though the time spent taking

the image is less than the time spentputting it together comparatively, therecan be a tremendous color shiftbetween the first press of the shutterand the final shot of the image, espe-cially at sunrise or sunset. In order tomatch images so flawlessly, Rauzier hasto adjust each of them, often even sin-gle aspects within each image, with lev-els, color balance and hue/saturation.Says Rauzier, “Practice, practice,

practice is the only way I’ve been ableto get good at it.”

Realization“I can say I now take pictures every-

where I go,” Rauzier says. “When I wasin L.A., I planned to take the big city,cars, freeways; instead I shot trees, cactusand flowers! I had an idea of L.A., but Idiscovered something else, very exoticand rich formy creativity. So I can’t plantoomuch ahead of time. I know it whenI see it. I shoot all that’s interesting andhave a huge library of images. Some pic-tures I took a few years ago and neverput together, but I know they’re on myhard drives as well as in mymind.