itinéraires
By Vincent Bitaud
23 April 2007
"If you want to do scenography, dont buy a car. Take the metro, the bus, or walk. Observe closely the people surrounding you"
[Fritz Lang]
More than 9 million people living in the the parisian agglomeration commute daily on its huge transport system. An unstopable flow of human bodies passing by each other and often crash other without even looking at each other. Mothers, children, single men and women, homeless, businessmen, retired workers, accordion players, construction workers...
Nameless people. And I in the middle.
On their impassive faces or their inexpressive body, i write a story, a past, a future, that their muteness prevents me from reading. I see boredom, weight of the years, the kilometers, the hundreds of hours of underground introspection. The metro is the stage of a gigantic theater of generalized indifference, of which i'm the scenographer.
Taking their picture without them noticing it, i'm turning into a voyeur of a despair i'm the only one to see. And if they eventualy see me, they'll pretend they didnt, convinced that they're too insignificant to interest me.
Rather than paying attention to each one of them separately, i chose to burry them in the fate i decided they'd get : an exhausting existence based on routineness, a mind emptied to escape the distance that separate them from their home.
Weeks after weeks, years after years, i collect hundreds of shots. They all fusionate into one single picture, a gigantic patchwork : the formal representation of boredom and urbanity.
The echo of a reality i try to escape, but that keeps eating me little by little.
More Photo Essays
Waiting For The Ferry
By Matt Bennett. 20 Aug 2008.
Kids selling drinks and collecting bottles on the Saigon - Pnohm Penh Highway.
More stories by Vincent Bitaud
Thanks for letting us know!
Thanks for voicing your concerns. Rest assured, we take it seriously. We'll look into it and take any appropriate action.
