The Captor I, 2010
“History, memory, travel, storytelling and wandering are all paradigms linked to time and which have been part of Bertrand Carrière’s photographic production since the very beginning of his artistic career. A keen photographer, he has used a light and discreet digital camera for his project Le Capteur, capturing public places, private spaces, families, friends and strangers almost daily since 2006, returning to the autobiographical scope that has always underpinned his work. This vertiginous collection of personal images, a sort of photographic atlas, was naturally going to be declined on the support of the book, testifying to the undeniable attachment of the artist to his work of this artist for the diary.
Technically, the accumulation of images was subject to the sole logic of the camera’s memory cards, which were emptied monthly. These punctual compilations take the place of chapters within an inner odyssey that unfolds in the forty-two books created to date, each of them corresponding to one or more of these chapters.
Bertrand Carrière exploits here the discursive power of photography in the form of automatic writing where any hierarchy of genres is abolished, forcing unforeseen iconographic encounters, unlikely eventual and temporal coincidences, the banal rubbing shoulders with the unusual. Although the impulsive act of shooting is at the heart of this
However, a rigorous methodology was going to be necessary, from the selection of shots from the impressive bank that has been built up to date, to their pairing on the double page, requiring the meticulousness and patience of the editor in front of his screen. It goes without saying that the alternation between spontaneity and methodology, between the snapshot of the capture and the long time it takes to construct the narrative, makes even clearer the preponderant place occupied by time in this project.
Mona Hakim
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