You started as a copywriter in an ad agency, and you’re now a
creative director. In the meantime, you became a photographer. How did
images come into your life?I started late in photography. I
hadn’t studied graphic design: I started in an ad agency as a
copywriter. I didn’t really have a visual culture, but rubbed shoulders
with art directors, photographers, and understood that my main interest
was basically visual, even though I had no technical skills whatsoever.
As a copywriter, I was denied access to images; I started taking
pictures to compensate for the frustration. And in adworld, where things
always end up with a logo in the corner, photography allowed me to
create more freely. I was probably around 30 when I got started, and
soon realized I was really keen, almost obsessively in fact.
Your practice of photography is very much linked to travelling…Very
much so: I need to go abroad. In France, the scenery looks all too
familiar, it doesn’t inspire me. I work almost exclusively in the United
States because it’s not that different from France: it’s a modern,
Western country – the ingredients are almost the same, but there’s
always an added hint of exoticism. I travel to the US once a year, on my
own, stay ten days and take pictures. Apart from then, I don’t walk
around with a camera.
The only pictures I took in Paris are still lives I shot at home in the very beginning.
Why are you so attracted to the American West, to the great outdoors?There’s
a form of streamlined simplicity in the landscape. I mostly visit
Southern and South-Western states, Texas or California, often in winter,
for the light and milder weather. I find it hard to work in urban
environments, in saturated places, probably because I'm a bit shy and
need a quiet comfort zone when photographing.
These bare expanses feel a bit like canvases on which you stage your scenes: is that how you see things?I
do like purely contemplative images in which nothing happens, but I
leave that to others who are better at it. Perhaps it’s a professional
bias: I always prefer pictures where something’s going on, where there’s
an idea. In my work, I always try to tell a little story and keep it
simple. Which may be why I have chosen to use black and white to focus
on the idea, to be more concise. When I do colour, it feels scattered
and confused.
When I place an object or a Batman figure in a
landscape - as I have often done – it serves as a kind of excuse for me
to stick my tripod in a beautiful landscape that would otherwise be
difficult to shoot just for itself.
Many of your images contain references – but from a very broad spectrum! From Courbet to Z-movies?That’s
right: I would say they extend from Hopper to Snoopy. It probably comes
from my day job - being a sponge, absorbing everything around me.
When
I was a kid, I used to love Sempé; now, I love American cartoonists,
with their permanent witty nods to things, as much as Friedlander,
Boubat or Courbet.
Do you prepare your images in advance? How much you leave to chance?Before
I set off for the US, I usually have images in mind, things that come
to me all year long; I take notes. I often scribble a sketch, and once I
get there, I just wait for the right moment, the right location.
For
these two images, for instance, I had been looking for that puzzle for a
while: I ended up buying one on eBay, from a U.S. seller, and took it
back to the States. The book is also something I brought along in my
suitcase.
I leave home with ideas I want to bring to fruition:
sometimes I succeed, sometimes I don’t – if so, I try again the
following year. There’s a constant in my work, which I think can be felt
in these two images: they were taken ten years apart, but they could be
contemporary.
I have old habits too: I still work with film, using the
same camera and the same 50mm lens. I work in daylight or ambient
artificial light. I use no lighting, flash etc., I just have a tripod
allowing longer exposure times in low light. Like in this hotel room.
It’s very hand-crafted in a sense, it always leaves room for chance. For
Flying Saucer, for instance, I had planned everything, and then
this car drove by with its headlights on, which was just perfect. There
are always happy little accidents that can make an image lively and
magical.
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