This is not the first time that photographer Raphaël Neal and writer Alice Zeniter have worked together. Neal, a young, multi-faceted French artist produced a feature film in 2014, Fever, adapted by Zeniter from a novel by Leslie Kaplan. “When Fabienne Pavia [director of the publishing house Bec En L’Air] asked me to choose an author, I immediately thought of Alice,” says Neal. Their history together led them to collaborate again on a new work in Bec En L’Air’s Collateral collection, which brings a contemporary writer and photographer into dialogue. The series De qui aurais-je crainte (Who Should I Be Afraid Of?), produced between 2008 and 2011, depicts a majestic priest with bright red skin in a setting that seems unadulterated by mankind, the same setting as in Zeniter’s story.
The photographs appears gradually throughout the book, so as not to disturb the harsh reality of the main character, a cleaning lady who works in deserted open spaces. Neal wanted Zeniter to write a story dissonant with his images, a tale of the banality and ugliness of the world when Neal offers a vision of it where man is earthly, archaic, almost tribal, where one would come to seek refuge. These are not simply details and empty landscapes that arrive little by little. Headaches and vision of the cleaning lady come before the appearance, at the very end, of the red man living in these large spaces. Perhaps an answer is the loneliness exuded by the heroine.
