Shadows

“Bayonne, 1937”, this time. In the same old photo album which inspired my last post, Photomaton, I noticed a series of photos, obviously taken in the same settings, but dialoguing as well through a touching detail: the photographer’s shadow is visible on each one of them. The two friends photographed each other in the same spots. […]

Photomaton

“Biarritz, 1938” [printemps? automne?] L’identité de la jeune femme me reste inconnue. Mais avoir à sa disposition une série de portraits, ça permet de recomposer ne serait-ce qu’une illusion de continuité temporelle entre les instants photographiques, et de voir par-delà l’image.

“There was a little girl / Who had a little curl / Right in the middle of her forehead”

Meet “Jacky” (as mentioned on the back of two of these photos found at a flea market in Paris), a little girl who was certainly very used to being photographed! Outdoors or within the decors of a studio, Jacky had fun singing and playing to music-loving hens and rabbits.  The studio seems at the same […]

Le paradoxe du manteau de mi-saison

Ci-dessous, en deux hypostases, un sourire contagieux rencontré dans une boîte de photos orphelines au marché de la Porta Portese. Je ne pouvais qu’adopter ces deux photos qui respirent le soleil et la joie. J’ai chassé l’habituelle question: “à qui ces photos seront-elles devenues inutiles?” pour pleinement savourer l’instant d’élégance et d’insouciance (dominicale?) qu’elles ont […]

Redistribution

I love this photo I found a while ago on a regular excursion to a flea market. In these sad times, I take even more delight in breathing joy from it, allowing the barely sketched moves captured in the photo to unfold and reach back to the intricate choreographies from which they were detached. This […]

Le fil rouge

Odds and Lens turns more “odds” than “lens” these days – I’ve been significantly swept away, both from my main work and from the “divertissement” I had devised for myself here, by a new project which involves a great deal of archival hunting and interpretation work that are slightly different from those I was acquainted […]