Delhi and Mumbai togheter almost represent half of the french population. (13 million in Delhi and 17 in Bombay)
Figures in India gallop like escaped horses.They give the dizziness, lash out, rear and still leave to challenge the conceivable. Life and survival deceive at each corner of the street, or any building’s entrance.
I attempt to show this urban, contemporary, modern India if we can say, by photographing in the street, outdoor. I try to make a street-movie, a dive in the heart of streets, suburbs and all around.
India fascinates me by its capacity of going too far with constant, stubborn nonsense, with this optimism back to front, these million lives and its million survivals, this art to step over the times, to recycle everything, finally almost hardly…
I have a problem with the picturesque, I don't know what to do with it. Postcards ?
When I need to gather or send images, I prefer to rely on those humble artefacts, kitchy though they are but more gullible than any attempt at putting into form with angles and lenses what an ideal India would be, strange and beautiful, too beautiful to be true.
The unbelievable is to be captured elsewhere, in the everyday, the ordinary, the commonplace… On the pavements and by-ways. The permanent chaos that cities like Delhi and Mumbai are prone to exhibit freely contain a larger chunk of truth on contemporary India than your standard chromos.
This explains why I go for many departures and arrivals, so as to constantly find myself in the position of the guy who lands there and is utterly lost, unable to understand a thing. And I do not want to understand. I want my eye to be the eye of the animal that is not going to settle there. I have no inclination for « style », I want to be overwhelmed, I let things and images get a head start on, even the slowness of the place.
That is why I take pictures from taxis, autos, trains and buses. I need to add speed to my frame if I want my photos to dazzle and sizzle. And I walk a lot, for long stretches of time. The body knows when it needs to dance instead of marching like he who knows what he is doing and where he is heading. I trace routes in red pencil on the map so that the urban landscape becomes a scenery filled with actors and props persons, stand-ins and stagehands in an endless comedy with no director in sight. In India, everything is intertwined to an extent that is unbelievable, in huge dimensions and proportions : whether it is different times or graphic signs that mix religion and advertising. Everything and everyone interact and dissolve almost simultaneously.
God knows why, my vision is lateral and panoramic in Mumbai. While in Delhi it goes into more deepths, in a more one to one relationship.
Tracking shot and reverse angle ?
I am dazzled by the indian art of straddling and spanning gaps and eras. The present seems absorbable, almost as if it were already today a thing of the past.
One needs to document, then, I gather.
Figures in India gallop like escaped horses.They give the dizziness, lash out, rear and still leave to challenge the conceivable. Life and survival deceive at each corner of the street, or any building’s entrance.
I attempt to show this urban, contemporary, modern India if we can say, by photographing in the street, outdoor. I try to make a street-movie, a dive in the heart of streets, suburbs and all around.
India fascinates me by its capacity of going too far with constant, stubborn nonsense, with this optimism back to front, these million lives and its million survivals, this art to step over the times, to recycle everything, finally almost hardly…
I have a problem with the picturesque, I don't know what to do with it. Postcards ?
When I need to gather or send images, I prefer to rely on those humble artefacts, kitchy though they are but more gullible than any attempt at putting into form with angles and lenses what an ideal India would be, strange and beautiful, too beautiful to be true.
The unbelievable is to be captured elsewhere, in the everyday, the ordinary, the commonplace… On the pavements and by-ways. The permanent chaos that cities like Delhi and Mumbai are prone to exhibit freely contain a larger chunk of truth on contemporary India than your standard chromos.
This explains why I go for many departures and arrivals, so as to constantly find myself in the position of the guy who lands there and is utterly lost, unable to understand a thing. And I do not want to understand. I want my eye to be the eye of the animal that is not going to settle there. I have no inclination for « style », I want to be overwhelmed, I let things and images get a head start on, even the slowness of the place.
That is why I take pictures from taxis, autos, trains and buses. I need to add speed to my frame if I want my photos to dazzle and sizzle. And I walk a lot, for long stretches of time. The body knows when it needs to dance instead of marching like he who knows what he is doing and where he is heading. I trace routes in red pencil on the map so that the urban landscape becomes a scenery filled with actors and props persons, stand-ins and stagehands in an endless comedy with no director in sight. In India, everything is intertwined to an extent that is unbelievable, in huge dimensions and proportions : whether it is different times or graphic signs that mix religion and advertising. Everything and everyone interact and dissolve almost simultaneously.
God knows why, my vision is lateral and panoramic in Mumbai. While in Delhi it goes into more deepths, in a more one to one relationship.
Tracking shot and reverse angle ?
I am dazzled by the indian art of straddling and spanning gaps and eras. The present seems absorbable, almost as if it were already today a thing of the past.
One needs to document, then, I gather.
