L'Oeil Urbain Festival : Rip Hopkins — Odyssée 2022

Rip Hopkins — Odyssée 2022

L’OEIL URBAIN FESTIVAL
On the city’s billboard signs
From April 1 to May 22, 2022

For nearly 10 years now, the Œil Urbain photography festival in Corbeil-Essonnes has been exploring themes related to new urban realities. For its 10th edition, l’Œil Urbain explores the forms of commitment – to individuals, to the environment, and simply to the world in which we live – through a dozen or so exhibitions in the form of a photographic journey through the city.

Agence VU’ is largely associated with this tenth edition through the exhibitions of Rip Hopkins, Guillaume Herbaut, Darcy Padilla and Anne Rearick.

“Odyssée 2022”

Rip Hopkins spent 15 days in Corbeil-Essonnes, for a new format of a residency in the heart of the city and with its actors: associations, municipal services, businesses and places of life. He created an original photographic series, funny and sensitive like an odyssey, in the tradition of his Canada Canada series: in this documentary series he constructs the photographs like excerpts from North American films in the style of Martin Scorcese, the Cohen brothers or Brian de Palma. Each image has its own scenario and each plays its own role in its own reality, and he dives into the reality of his models. This work will be exhibited in 80 bus shelters in the city during the festival, in total immersion with the city.

“Ralph Waldo Emerson said it’s the journey that matters, not the destination. I like the idea that an encounter is like a journey towards the other, an exchange during the photographic process that I propose. It’s an intimate journey, made of mutual trust, which may last only as long as the staging and the pose. Then it’s over. What remains is a mixture of intuition and feeling that fixes this intimacy experienced during the shooting.

We all share the same perception of time passing. With photography, I imagine that I have the ability to extend this time, to make it elastic. My photographs are the keys that allow me to reactivate the encounters and travels I have made, which structure my past as much as they define who I have become.

I am grateful for the patience and generosity of all those who met me in Corbeil-Essonnes. On this journey we shared, we tried together to illustrate the commitment they demonstrate. I hope they will take the same pride in it that I do when I look back at the journey we have taken together.”

– Rip Hopkins