THESE VARIOUS AND SPECIAL MOMENTS
When I wander down the street with or without a reason , I tend to observe everything. I look at everything except at where my feet go. I must have inherited it from my father.
The smallest detail attracts me. It intrigues me, it is of great interest to me. People’s lives bring life to mine. Their daily life, habits and quirks produce an obsession in myself: photograph anything and everything. I like having my camera around my neck whatever the cost. I then pay attention to a raft of trifles. Whatever element will attract me like a magnet. I stare at pieces of any action taking place beside me. I gaze at the fragments of our everyday lives, every parts of them and of our bodies. I sometimes get stuck on what adorns our days. I try to immortalise all these moments, rightly, precisely or in a blurry and wonky way.
Through my photographies, I’d like to show what mankind created from scratch but to which we don’t pay attention anymore. I’m interested and intrigued by all gatherings of people. I now find myself hanging around in marches for causes I particularly care about. Next, I’m in companies in order to tell about the daily pace. I enjoy going to far from the city centre neighbourhoods, to places where no one ever thought turning it into postcards. I am fond of city trips as well as journeys in the mountain. I wish to show gender minorities, to focus on groups of people moved by the same desires, to show the beauty of family dinners, old houses’ melancholy, landscapes, to talk about the four seasons and to photograph people in the street.
Everyone’s everyday life is given rhythm by the constant development of technology. Sometimes, simple things are forgotten.
My journeys give me some answers to the many questions within myself. Yet, doubts remain and sometimes damage my thoughts. Photographing aimlessly, meandering the city, feeling alone even when surrounded by thousands of people behind my small analogue camera has an ointment or plaster effect on me.
PERSONAL JOURNEY
My landscaper studies and my first job in relation with gardens and nature helped and assisted me in understanding space. At first sight, one could say that this course or career path I followed as a passion have nothing to do with my actual life. In fact, a lot of similarities have helped me during my process, and still do today.
Between 2002 and 2004, I passed a Brevet de Technicien Supérieur d’Aménagement Paysager, which us an Advanced Technician’s Certificate in Landscape Design, in apprenticeship with an interior landscaping professional in Toulouse (FR). This professional experience still echoes within myself to this day. Knowledge about trees and plants, space occupation, the importance of a local architecture, of a coherence between vegetable and mineral, the specific identity to each country, to each city or sometimes even to each neighbourhood, is still important to me. All these things were and still are part of what fascinate me. Without mentioning the social aspect, the sociological study of individuals, their personality, what their gardens reveal about them, that echoes within myself, again and again.
Being extremely drawn by urban cultures, during my studies and without questioning myself too much, tagging and graffiti gave rhythm to my days and nights. This practice lasted for fifteen years. It made me travel, meet a lot of people and discover the world with a new perspective. I felt good when I was somewhere it was forbidden to be. I remember this unexplainable feeling of facing a wall with the loud world in my back or the one of going to bed while everyone was getting up.
Since then, I carry a small camera around. I pile pictures up here and there, like memories in the back of a drawer. I hardly ever look at them and rarely show them. It’s as if they belonged to the future: leave a trail and forget it exists. Over the years, I wasn’t really satisfied with the digital culture at the complete opposite of what I am fighting for day after day. I owe this to my wife, Carole. She is the one who pushed me in this direction. At the beginning of 2019, we came back all psyched up from our honeymoon in California. I brought home about 5000 pictures taken with my little Fujifilm X100T that I liked so much. I’m unable to retain only one image of this trip. Looking back, the 120 shots done by my life partner are all engraved in my memory. I only need to glance at her pictures to go back to these moments: the series in ( pas sûre de ce que tu veux dire ici) Palm Springs, the Joshua Tree National Park, Nevada signs, or even the palm trees floating in the Los Angeles sky.
A few months later, we had decided to take our parents to New York for eight days. I forced myself to take only two film cameras with me: a Konika Pop and an Olympus OM1, which I found harder to tame. But it’s during this trip that everything changed in my artistic and pictorial life.
Now, what I like the most in this practice is being at the beginning of a new adventure. I can’t forecast the future. I can’t anticipate what is going to happen during this quest and unexpected adventure. I have the feeling that all that comes to me is infinite. I appreciate telling myself I can limitlessly go anywhere with my camera and films. Just like writing, reading, picture culture, films, series or music, photography allows me to travel, to make people travel and above all, to show certain things we don’t see, or not anymore.
MY INSPIRATIONS
I was born and raised in Saint Cédé, in the north of the Lot department. It’s located right in the middle of France between Limoges and Toulouse. If you want to look at it from a wider perspective, it’s a small town between New York and Beijing. I like the idea that I built myself in the middle of the world, in the middle of nothing but at the heart of everything at the same time.
Now, I live and work in Pessac, in the suburb of Bordeaux in Gironde (33). I’m discovering the city a little more each day.It’s in the south-west of France. I must admit that if today I’m this involved in photography and so into it, it’s thanks to my wife Carole Meije Moreau Soquet, who is and will remain to my eyes the best in the field. She encourages me and pushes me to keep going. Her gaze and vision mean a lot to me.
I’ve had a huge stimulus when she took me to Bruce Gilden’s with whom she had done a Workshop in Miami. He and I have something in common: his wife is French and she’s from Bordeaux. When I met this man, I didn’t know his work. I hadn’t dared to say a thing with my poor and broken English for fear of not being understood and of not understanding anything. I had spent my time observing this person and his three cats he adored with child’s eyes. When it comes to photography I have lots of gaps as for the great names that built the movement. Yet, the unforeseen events of life and the encounters it gave me made me a vision up that I like. I became aware of what Street Photography is on this day, after meeting one of the pioneers of this movement. Afterwards, I spent hours and hours watching videos of him busy shooting in the streets around the world, and I read some of his publications. As he says, ‘Beauty is everywhere’. I got conscious and wanted to be close to the people and the scenes I wish to snap so that the viewer too can get involved in the story we want to look at.
I recognise myself a lot in the work of Emilie Désir, which I took the time to discover after meeting her in the Pyrénées. Her committed photography and her vision echoes a lot in me. She photographs gender minorities, she’s the voice of a large part of the invisible population. She works with passion.
I am light years away from their level and fame but I like spending time looking at their work and observing it. I’m also very intrigued by and quite a fan of Fred Mortagne’s black and white photos, Odile Bobby’s portraits, and Théo Gosselin’s American vision. I’m discovering Vivian Maier’s wonderful works.These influences dance in the back of my mind like background music.
Our house is full of plants, objects, paintings and photographs. Two of these often catch my eyes. The first one is a shot from photojournalist Camille Lepage, who unfortunately died too young. The picture we have from her is an action taking place in Sudan where a couple is standing in the middle of what remains of their house, remnants of war. It looks like a watercolour. The silence and poetry emerging from this scene are incredible.
The second shot that I appreciate a lot and look at each day ia picture from Thomas Hoepker. During the 9/11 attacks, he was on the other side of the river, busy immortalising a group of adults in the middle of a conversation. Behind them, you can see the flames rising at a furious pace towards the sky. The scene is absurd.
THE FUTURE
In the future, I hope I’ll hold on to this casual attitude of my early days. I’m not willing to develop a better technique. The cameras I use and my way of thinking convince me of it day after day. I move forward thoughtlessly, head down or eyes up to the sky. I started film photography with a little camera Konika Pop bought for 2 euros at a bric-a-brac. Sometimes later, visiting Scotland, I got hold of an Olympus OM1. Then, a year ago exactly, I was gifted a Nikon L35 for Christmas. It’s coming with me anywhere between two repairs.
I sometimes use old films I’m sold or given but most of the time I buy Ultramax films from Kodak, hence my name on Instagram.
I’m eager to display collections in places where I’m not particularly expected. I wish to go anywhere humans are. I’d like to have the opportunity to bring my point of view to new wedding photography or to display any job field. I consider myself a good second eye to a main photographer. I’d never claim being able to cover an event on my own but I’d really appreciate making unforgettable the little details that make up our daily life, illustration our lives, etching our moves and habits, glorifying them and perpetuating our traditions. I want to bring 2020 a little of 1990.
Thank you for reading me until the end.
I speak a lot. It’s the same on my social network publications, but deep down, I think it’s what fits me in daily life, so there is no reason for it to be different here.
Don’t hesitate to give me feedback via e-mail or Instagram and to get in touch with me for any project idea.
Paul Pavel, le 3 Janvier 2022 à Pessac.