Random Excellence: Benoit Paille

William Gibson. Photo by Benoit Paillé.

Or not so random—this is the portrait of William Gibson that adorns the article I quoted yesterday. It breaks every rule of portraiture, and it's brilliant. It looks splendid as a full page of the New Yorker print magazine. I can't stop looking at it there.

The head is placed just subtly northwest of dead center in the frame; the flash implies a brief moment of lucidity in gloom; the heavy foliage in the lower right anchors the picture in chaos from which the man emerges, as if previously hidden, and the eye is led further back in space by the perspective distortion of the hulking dark house; everything leads back to the blank dark twilit sky which reveals nothing. The faux "cross-processed" color lends an otherworldly air, and the soft spottiness all over everything—you'd like to think it's snow, but who knows—looks alien. The figure leans in quizzically. The facial expression is enigmatic, blank, but accepting.

Perfection in imperfection. 

Paillé has been on the road living in a camper since 2013. His bio informs us, or rather does not inform us: "Of a disdainful nature, he yearns to be excluded from any renowned circle. Despite his international recognition, Benoit remains humble and open to others. He has the ability to intrude easily in the authentic life of people to wreck and corrupt their traditional habitat with technology. When children ask him what his THC vaporizer machine is, he lies and tells them it’s an asthma device. Wishing to step apart from institutionalized biographies, Benoit is making a lot of efforts to break through. Ambitious he masturbates only once a day. Either way, he’s putting a lot of energy in transgressing conventions. Art sustain him more than leftovers hot-dogs." (Translated, one assumes, from the French.)

Whoever at the New Yorker got the idea to hire Benoit to do the illustration for this article, a pat on the back and big kudos to that person, and to his or her boss or bosses. Inspired choice. Paillé is the ideal portraitist for the enigmatic, influential, cerebral science fiction writer. The portrait alone makes me curious to read Gibson's books. And to see more of Benoit Paillé's work. You will find him on gbuffer, Instagram, flickr, Lensculture, 500px, and elsewhere.

I keep going back to it and it looks more imperfectly perfect every visit, like a jazz piece that is opaque at first and reveals itself only on repeated hearings. Trés bon.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

Please help support The Online Photographer through Patreon

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Andre Y: "I read that article when it first came out, and really enjoyed it, especially for revealing the catholicity of Gibson’s life and tastes. He does seem to be living the artist’s life many aspire to.

"I believe the colors as they are, aside from contrast, saturation, etc. adjustments, were captured in-camera instead of being shifted in post processing. There were probably two flashes placed on either side of the camera, one with a green gel, and another with a magenta gel. Where light from both flashes, of complementary colors, hit appears without color cast (e.g., his face), but where light from only one flash misses, like the shadows cast by Gibson, the light from the opposite flash then colors the shadows. You can see that shadows, as well as the snowfall, on one side of the photo are green while the other side has a magenta shadow.

"When I use this technique, I’ll often use the white balance control to make sure my white light is white, and then let the other colors fall where they may. And this technique isn’t as exotic as it sounds, as many photographers and filmmakers have done a more subtle version with white balancing a tungsten key light which drives the shadows blue. It’s a cool technique that is effective in certain situations and this portrait is certainly one of them!"

Sree ram Chandran. S: "The pic looks like a snapshot taken with a dinky camera set to auto and then push-processed for revealing the background which unfortunately over-exposed the subject. I apologise, but I cannot see anything great about this photo."

Mike replies: No need for an apology. Your response is as valid as mine.

Nick: "Gibson's books have gotten quieter and more cerebral as he's gotten older, and as much as I loved Neuromancer and Mona Lisa Overdrive when I read them about a decade after they were printed, his more recent stuff appeals to me far more now. His 2014 book The Peripheral is a fascinating take on a mode of time travel, with a look at a distant future that follows an entirely too plausible near future. The sequel to it, Agency, has just been released, and I am very much looking forward to it."

Don McConnell: "Wow, thanks for the tip! His Instagram feed is worth a look and I really like his series of images of a lit cube (or what looks like one) in the landscape. Trés bon, as you say!"

[These next two comments came in next to each other:]

Sharon (partial comment): "To me, this portrait is off-putting and I would not want to read this guy's books. I found the photographer's bio to be even more off-putting. But I am allergic to artist statements so there is that."

Zack Schindler: "Easily one of the best bios I have ever read. I burst out laughing whilst reading it. I find that a great photo too. His work on flickr is very different."

Tom Burke: "I like the portrait. William Gibson writes unconventional fiction so it seems appropriate that the portrait should also be unconventional. Actually, I'm intrigued by that smile—is he mocking the viewer ('suckers!')? Being polite ('let's get this over with...')? Or being mysterious ('I know something you don't!')? Given that his persona as a writer has always been removed from that of the typical writer, the mystery and the portrait seem appropriate. Actually, when I say that he writes unconventional fiction, it's probably truer to say that it was unconventional in the 1980s. Today, his style is a mainstream choice, largely because of his work. The portrait reflects what I have always seen as his nature—'Here's what I do, and I'm perfectly relaxed as to whether you like it or not.' The portrait seems to me to transmit at least some of that relaxed attitude. (You may have gathered that I'm a fan.)"

Comments

[Mark B]

William Gibson! My absolute favorite author! If you haven't read any of his work, I recommend starting with Neuromancer, and working forward from there. But his pre-Neuromancer short stories are amazing, too.

[Sharon]

It's interesting how people who proclaim their coolness by their oddities all look and sound alike. Like hell's angels who are such outlaws but you can't tell them apart. This guy has all the cool artist speak down - marijauna and masterbation. How cool is that?

What the heck does this even mean - " He has the ability to intrude easily in the authentic life of people to wreck and corrupt their traditional habitat with technology." Sounds pretty damn arrogant.

To me, this portrait is off-putting and I would not want to read this guy's books. I found the photographer's bio to be even more off-putting. But I am allergic to artist statements so there is that.

Sharon

[What I intuited from his biographical material is that he might be a guy who has certain deficits (athsma, for one, which we get from the quote I used) and is bravely trying to forge a meaningful life despite them. But from such slender evidence, either of us could be right about him or either of us could be wrong. --Mike]

[Stan B.]

Speaking of color and Sci-Fi:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/23/movies/color-out-of-space-review.html

[Ned Bunnell]

Mike,

Benoit has another portrait of Gibson on his Instagram feed that’s equally appealing. Elizabeth Renstrom is the Senior Visuals Editor at the New Yorker who worked with Benoit on this assignment.

Cheers,
Ned

[John Camp]

For what it's worth, I hated the shot when I saw it, and as a fellow author, felt sorry for Gibson. Again, for what it's worth, I assumed all of the little green dots were a star field photo placed on top of the portrait image. No? Although I once had a darkroom and I set aside, and then forgot, a photo still damp from the wash, and when I found it again, some long time later, the entire surface was covered with black fungus clumps that also look somewhat like the green dots in this photo.

[Eolake Stobblehouse]

Ah, I only notice now: part of why it looks unusual is that it’s taken with two flashlights, one with a green filter and one with a red filter. Together it’s white light, but the shadows become green and red...

Gibson has been one of my top favorite authors since the eighties. I particularly love the first three books (the Sprawl trilogy) and Pattern Recognition, and All Tomorrow’s Parties.

[michael Perini]

He made anInteresting picture out of a mundane one.
I always get the urge to 'deconstruct' as a learning exercise for myself.
Here is my guess:
I would say there are two lights in this picture, one flash low and gelled green, and one higher with a snoot illuminating Mr Gibson.
There are a couple of 'tells'n the picture, Mr Gibson casts a shadow behind him that we can see, so the main light is camera right, and the horizontal fence rail behind him is deep green in the shadow, light green beyond the shadow. The main light is probably a stop hotter to wash out the green from his face. You can also see that the green light dissipates progressively toward the top of the picture.
The snow gets less green, the eaves of the house have a green cast on the bottom, look whiter on their front.
Great Picture

[Kenneth Tanaka]

"I keep going back to it and it looks more imperfectly perfect every visit, like a jazz piece that is opaque at first and reveals itself only on repeated hearings."

That's the true "magic of photography".

[Peter Wright]

Sorry. This is another off topic comment by me.

Just before I read this post this morning I read an article in the NYT "The Photographer of Choice for Influencers Is Everywhere". It is about a photographer who photographs famous people and is famous himself as a result. Like Richard Avedon I thought. (And he uses film would you believe! And gives photographic tips to his hordes of admirers). However, I had never heard of the photographer – Bryant Eslava – or any of the 'famous' people he has photographed. Also, there were entire paragraphs that seemed to be about filters and such that were completely unintelligible to me. I felt like Rip Van Winkle and I had just been awakened in January 2120 after a cryogenic sleep. Can you confirm it is still 2020? Thanks.

[Franz Amador]

The fourth image of this set implies how this was done. Yes, filtered lights, and the "snow" is actually droplets from a spray bottle.

https://www.instagram.com/p/B7QqMVqHBSe/

[Don McConnell]

I’m not sure the guy takes himself too seriously and looks to be having fun, though he clearly seems serious about his photography. If you look at his Instagram you can see that he uses a good old Ricoh GR, jerry rigged to a green gelled flash. He had an assistant with a garden sprayer spray water droplets into the air.

Some of his stuff reminded me of Viviane Sassen’s slightly surreal fashion work. I liked it.

[Jeff1000]

I like the photograph; it's ok. It's just one idea from one photographer.

[Paul Richardson]

My takeaway from seeing this image is that there’s hope for me yet. Lots of it, actually.

[David Raboin]

According to his Instagram account Benoit is running a print sale currently. https://www.instagram.com/p/B7wE1KhB5kj/?igshid=mf80ekp3o8ga

[Oskar Ojala]

I have been following Paille for a while and enjoy the inventiveness of his work. His gelled flash technique appears simple, but has clearly been honed over a period of time (he uses a Ricoh GR and a large custom flash bracket).

Paille does not really conform to norms of bourgeois society and seems to live at the edge of it. Obviously some people will dislike that, but it also means that he is more open to radical ideas in his art.

[Andrew]

I noticed that photograph in the New Yorker. It is a striking photo.

Your post here prompted me to view the rest of Paille's work and contact him through Instagram. He has many interesting photographs. I arranged to purchase a 13" x 19" print of one for a reasonable price. He was quick to respond and very friendly.

The print was mailed to me today. I look forward to seeing it.