My first job was wedding photographer. Which I was for almost ten years. It suited me to watch others be happy and to think that I was the one on whom the memory of the happiest day of their lives depended. Besides, I only worked on Saturdays, which left me time to think about other things. After the shootings, all the photographers met in the laboratory to wait for the prints that we sold the same evening during the banquet. I loved watching the steady stream of images regurgitated by the big developer. Since that time, I have remained fascinated by these moments of happiness fabricated in a tender, raw or absurd reality. Like an archaeologist I started a collection, patiently extracting from the mass of thousands of unsold photos – strata of abandoned private memories – a new family. The people shown are so far from me, yet so close; they are my neighbours, my friends, my cousins and my sisters. I allowed myself to pick up these photographs and show them because I feel concerned, involved in them.
It was not me therefore who took these photographs. I haven’t changed them either. I just saved them from oblivion.
Jean-Christian Bourcart
Jean-Christian Bourcart : Le plus beau jour de ma vie
Fisheye editions
Preface by Clarisse Gorokhoff,
main text by Jean-Christian Bourcart
Size: 140 × 210mm
96 pages
Language: French & English
ISBN: 979-10-97326-20-3
Price : €12.00
