Alain Carayol takes his bag then the train before boarding a bus. Finally he walks. He is in another country. In the crowd, he watches, sometimes for a long time, before finding the right moment. He shoots, then leaves again. In the initiative to create, spontaneity is king. However, a question then arises, that of the direction taken and the meaning drawn from the experience. How is the desire to go towards characterized? On what current do we lean? In what voltage? What is this tenacious desire that allows you to go over hill and dale? Alain Carayol’s choice is a different choice from “the one where the image is created before the shot is even taken”. We are therefore, neither more nor less, in a photographic writing that seizes the opportunity of life as it unfolds, along the way. Here in the street, the time of a second and the painting is balanced. The image that jointly fixes all the elements of the scene opens up to us on several dimensions, including that of fiction as a hazardous outcome.
Michel le Brigand
These photographs are taken from an artist’s book under the title “Trans Europe Express”. Publication in limited edition in December 2021 in the FOLIO collection of 89books editions.
