Cédric Roux presents his book Before Rebirth published by Édition Odyssée. He introduces it like this:
Before Rebirth began during a month-long photography residency in Wilson, NC in December 2021.
Invited by the Eye on Main street festival, I made several stays. Accustomed to capturing the movement and intense life of the streets of New York, the first contact with Wilson was a real shock.
In search of a city which had been painted to him as in full boom, I wandered the city daily, exploring a vast territory ranging from the city center to the wealthy suburbs, including the poor neighbourhoods. On either side of the railway which symbolically and sociologically separates the city in two, I went in search of a light prefiguring a flourishing renewal!
With Before Rebirth, I show this feeling of gap that exists regarding the perception of the same place between the inhabitants of a city and someone with a new eye. Through photography, I want to see a promise that was not yet tangible.
With a population of 47,000, Wilson is far from Manhattan’s 1.5 million. Accustomed to a human density allowing me to fully express my photographic writing, I had to reinvent myself; I went looking for another aesthetic. My photography is more stripped down, more documentary, but remains firmly anchored in a territory and retains a palette, and framings that are mine.
Cedric Roux : Before Rebirth
Édition Odyssée, printed by Escourbiac
Introduction: Carol Johnson (former curator Library of Congress in Washington DC
Distributor: Art & Paper
96 pages – 20×25 cm vertical
41 images
