Alexandre Levi
- Anna Lilli Garai
- Sep 26
- 7 min read
Alexandre Levi works with photography and risography to give new weight to overlooked traces of daily life. A broken pane, a curtain, a discarded pan—small details that carry memory and presence—become central to his images. In works such as “No Place,” “Fix,” and “Stories,” he reflects on belonging, repair, and the lives objects continue to hold. His process combines the sharpness of graphic marks with the softness of lived moments, creating prints that are vivid yet intimate. Having lived in Paris, Japan, Thailand, and now Berlin, Levi brings these layered perspectives into a practice that is both precise and open to chance.
Q: You often work with traces and textures from daily life. What makes something feel worth keeping and turning into art?
A: I spend a lot of time looking closely at what surrounds me. A broken glass on the street, a shadow left by people passing quickly — these small traces catch my eye and stay with me. When they move me, I begin to work with them, testing how they can become part of an image. I experiment through collage and research, and once I have built a structure I often deconstruct it again, focusing on the essence of the message I want to translate. Textures and traces also have a specific graphic aspect that attracts me, a sharpness that already feels like a language.
They are reminders, markers of presence. For me, turning them into art is a way of remembering, of holding onto what might otherwise be erased. Somehow forgotten moments can become precious. I have seen how it helps others reflect and react too. By showing these details through my eyes, people begin to see their own surroundings differently. In Hakodate, Japan, when I photographed an abandoned house, neighbors shared invisible insights about what had once happened there. That exchange became part of the work. Traces can be universal, like a shadow on a wall, but some are very local, like patterned glass in Japan compared to Germany. This tension between the universal and the specific is what makes them so rich for me.
Q: In "No Place" the house feels both cared for and deserted. What story did you want that image to hold?
A: With this work I wanted to pay tribute to the idea of belonging. The curtain and the "No Parking" sign still show care, yet the house itself has been left behind. This was in Japan, where the phenomenon of akiya, abandoned houses, is striking, with millions of them across the country. The image speaks of the people who once lived there, and of the moment when someone either chooses or is forced to leave everything.
Sometimes it is because there is no work, sometimes because someone has died in the house, but always the same question remains: where do we belong. The neighborhood is calm and quiet. The curtains still fall softly, the pine tree seems to protect the spirits, and the house continues to stand.
For me, the violet façade does not carry sadness but beauty, almost like a living flower. The pink overprints break across it with a playful urgency. And in front, the "No Parking" sign becomes both invitation and refusal. To echo this tension I chose to print the text horizontally, asking the viewer to tilt their head, to shift their body, to enter the image in a different way. In this balance of softness and disruption, "No Place" reflects on beauty and loss, presence and absence, but above all on the fragile yet essential question of belonging.
Q: "Fix" takes broken glass and gives it new light. How do you see the idea of repair shaping your work?
A: Repair, for me, is a new state of something that was once whole. It is transformation. Even when something is fixed, what interests me is not the negative of what was broken, but the enrichment that comes through the act of holding it together. The fracture becomes a site of meaning, not a flaw to be hidden. In a way, repair is also a state of mind. Just as I focus on unseen traces, I repair images that might otherwise be discarded or forgotten. To repair can also mean to reinterpret, to give a second voice to what seems lost. In this variation of "Fix" the glass is printed in aqua blue, vivid and almost juicy, patterned with a diamond texture that catches the light unevenly, like worn memories. The masking tape crosses the surface in green, quiet but insistent. It does not erase the damage but marks it, holds it, and gives it presence. Together, the colors transform the broken surface into something luminous. The print feels like a form of emotional architecture, delicate, imperfect, and persistent. It recalls the spirit of kintsugi, where a break is not diminished but enriched. "Fix" is part of the "Silent Echoes" series, created in response to an abandoned house in Hakodate, Japan. What remains becomes the story, and repair becomes its language.
Q: With "Stories" you use everyday objects to carry memory. How do you know when an object has that kind of weight?
A: When something moves you emotionally at first sight, it already means it carries something. My eyes were immediately drawn to the pan, the wheel, the old television. They felt like artifacts, not because they were ancient, but because they carried traces of everyday life that had been interrupted. Things are kept, things are left, and in those gestures you see how decisions are made in life. Objects themselves are pure, almost silent. Taken alone they are not talkative, but once placed in their context they begin to reveal a story. Together these objects formed a kind of narrative of a family across generations. They evoked family dinners, evenings gathered around a show, the small rituals that give rhythm to belonging. Standing there, I could almost smell the meals once served in front of the screen. Ordinary things, yet they became like a time machine, pulling me back into another era. The colors carry this feeling further. The yellow circle repeats across the image like a sun and a pulse, creating rhythm and suggesting warmth and community.
The blue shadows counter it with distance and absence. Yet the combination is not only heavy. It is also light to the eyes, almost refreshing, and it leaves a good feeling. Memory here is not only about loss, it is also about brightness.
Q: Risography is central to your process. What does this technique give you that other methods do not?
A: What first struck me with risography was its freshness and its energy. It comes from a tradition of printing flyers, posters and zines, a democratic tool made for circulation and accessibility. It was never really used for photography, which surprised me. By working with riso I want to open a new and unexplored segment for photography in the art market, to show how this process can be used to create visual narratives with a different voice.
I was looking for something that carries playfulness but also strength and rigor. Riso has its own rhythm in comparison to other methods: the grain, the slight overlaps, the way the ink slowly absorbs into the paper. Each print becomes unique. You have to wait for it to dry, and in that waiting there is something meditative, almost like giving the image time to breathe before it reveals itself fully. I am particularly drawn to working in monochromes, where a single tone can create atmosphere and depth, but I also enjoy the vivid brightness of its palette. The range of colors is limited, but precisely in that limitation lies its beauty: aqua blue, neon pink, melon orange, olive green, to name only a few that I explore, even beyond the works shown in this interview. Riso insists on the real, and each print feels complete in its own way.
And, I also value that it is sustainable, with soy-based inks, low energy use and no heavy chemicals. And I choose to work in limited editions, so each piece retains its intimacy. For me risography combines freshness with discipline, playfulness with rigor, and that tension is what makes it central to my work.
Q: Living in Paris, Japan, Thailand, and now Berlin, you have moved through very different cultures. How have those shifts influenced the way you build images?
A: I was born in Paris, in the 19th district in the 1980s, a neighborhood that then felt close to Queens in New York. It was lively, mixed, sometimes rough, now more bohemian. Paris remains my reference. It gave me both sides: the elegance of Haussmannian architecture or the quiet order of the Palais Royal garden, and at the same time the immediacy of local markets or the raw intensity of the subway, dirty but in a way that was vital and full of life. Growing up there trained my eye to notice daily life, to look at ordinary details that are not staged or polished. That became the foundation of my practice. Asia then expanded this foundation. In Japan I encountered a different way of thinking about creativity, where poetry and discipline meet energy and color. Even in magazines, posters and advertisements, the construction of images felt different from Europe, with another rhythm and use of space. From ukiyo-e woodblock prints to contemporary fashion designers, I was inspired by how form and atmosphere can hold emotion. Risography also comes from Japan, and it became a natural extension of what I was absorbing there. In Thailand I focused on vibrancy and fullness, the saturation of colors, the sense of rhythm shaped by humidity. It was also there that I presented my first exhibition. Across Asia I was constantly meeting artists, exchanging ideas, and opening my practice to other perspectives.
Berlin has become the place of reveal. It is where my studio is, where I prepare exhibitions, but also where I collaborate with performers, dancers and DJs. Here my work also took on a new roughness. I developed a black metallic collection of monochrome prints about "belonging to the night," where close-ups and raw contrasts pushed against the vividness of my colored works. This experimentation gave another dimension to my practice and showed me how darkness and clarity can coexist. The city’s rawness and freedom encourage me to test boundaries, to extend my process beyond photography, and to create new rhythms and surprising moments. All of these experiences are now present in my work. You can feel them in the subjects I choose, in the colors I layer, in the rhythms and textures that emerge. They come together as a universal language, rooted in Paris as my reference, expanded through Asia, and revealed in Berlin.
