Ma boîte noire (2)
(…) audacity won over. I learned to love taking pictures without being a photographer. I saw in this democratic voice an access to the unknown, a way of looking at life from a distance, as if I belonged to an exotic temporality, far from France. I was no longer afraid of anything, neither hoodlums nor Indians disguised as cowboys, especially not the talibans, I was untouchable.
The vastness and the primitive were mine; Jules Verne belonged to me; the Countess of Castiglione and her divine feet were mine; the sidewalk was mine, Baudelaire, Bijou and the ongoing revolutions; the freshness of dawn, the blue horizon and the eternal light: we would see what we would see. That is how my story with the world began, slightly tralala, a bit gray, I smothered my love of cinema.
More than an unnecessary filter on reality, my little Yashica was the key to my private paradise. I was certain that I would know what to put there, and that all would go as planned.
A field of baby’s breath in the Cairo suburbs. A picket fence in Moscow. A love letter on a Beijing wall, or in Paris, on the rue de Verneuil, in the arms of Serge. A hill in the Basque country, as round as the moon. A white bench overlooking the Atlantic. Neons in the Arlesian sky, as sharp as Annie Ernaux’s words. Ladies in embossed dresses dancing in the quiet Lorraine night.
And Nestor Da, in Bamako, radiant youth. And Malick Sidibé, a generous man, the memory of a tolerant and musical Mali.
I love these portraits, the faces offered with joy. Their confidence.
Brigitte Ollier
