For 10 years, I have rubbed elbows with him on the internet and he always surprises me.
He, is Pierre Axel Léotard, author and director of Corridor Éléphant editions. In 2013, he thought about an online journal in an associative form intended, ultimately, to publish emerging creation. He brought together a few close friends, Corridor Éléphant was officially born in 2014.
He has just redesigned his magazine newsletter and on this occasion gave an interview to the magazine TK-21.
Jean-Jacques Naudet
Who is Pierre Léotard and what are Corridor Éléphant editions?
A mutineer, coming from a mutiny that has not yet taken place, or that he no longer remembers. As for Corridor Éléphant, someone once told me that publishing houses are as slow as ocean liners. If the Elephant were not a pachyderm, it would be a boat with a mutineer on board.
More seriously, Corridor Éléphant is an associative publishing house which, for twelve years, has published works by emerging artists in participatory editions.
These works are in limited edition, numbered and signed. Participatory publishing campaigns, during which Corridor Éléphant supports its authors, allow both the financing of printing and communication for the artist’s work.
But Corridor Éléphant is also an online magazine which relays and exhibits the work of almost 200 photographers and a digital magazine (2 issues a year) which can be leafed through like a paper magazine.
What is Corridor Elephant looking for?
To publish books which, due to their small print run, between 100 and 300 copies, are refused by traditional publishing houses or accepted if the author finances his own edition (sic).
To give substance to emerging creations, to leave a trace of these ways of looking at the present that search for profit companies often brushes aside.
To “make” a “book” an object of desire, as much as a link with the author and not a supermarket gondola head.
And, more than anything, to make and have fun. Life is short!
From web to paper, what path?
That of “the trace”.
A paper book is a tangible object, which we leaf through, whose colors or their absence reflect the light, and not the other way around; the times dictate that we mainly look at images on a screen. A book is an object that we close in order to open it better, that we put away on a shelf to better find it later in the depths of oblivion.
Is there a temporality in your editions and publications?
None, editions are like life, an eternal present.
Who to publish, why and how?
Who or what?
The publishing house publishes any successful statement that seems to it to be in balance. We publish 90% of the first work (we love it!). The authors, to date, are mainly photographers.
They all have a desire (and this is a necessary condition in participatory publishing) to communicate with an often emerging audience. A first work is an opportunity to consolidate it. They perceive the book as an object allowing them to push their work further.
For what ?
Because over time, we like to see artists grow and their creations shared.
How ?
In participatory edition. Which means that an edition at Corridor Éléphant always advances on two axes at the same time.
1/ The making of the book:
The editorial team includes an editor, a graphic designer, a proofreader, several authors (who allow us, if necessary, to offer authors texts accompanying their work).
The model of the book is produced in consultation with the author. Depending on the progress of his project, we can support him at each stage (from editing to writing text).
2/ Participatory publishing and the communication campaign:
We support the author in creating a file that will allow him to communicate by email during the campaign and in the development or preparation of his social networks. The participatory publishing campaign is led by one of the team members who supports the author throughout the operation (28 days).
Participatory publishing is above all a communication campaign. If communication is done well, it can be a success. All the editions that we have carried out to date (a little over 150) are editions which have exceeded, and for many of them very significantly, the 100% necessary for printing.
What are Corridor Éléphant’s projects?
I wouldn’t say projects but “desires”. Founded by photographers, Corridor Éléphant has been publishing emerging photography for over ten years. One of us is passionate about graphic novels and drawing; we published a first comic strip in June 2024. We would be happy, in parallel with photographic works, to publish other modes of creation and expression, comic strips, drawings, painting, short texts.
And your news?
Two editions in progress and one to come.
“CRÉALITÉ, photographie de l’impalpable. » Very beautiful work in Black and White by Pol Lujan. It offers photographs taken in Europe, the United States and South America over the last 30 years. The work is sensitive, careful, and reminds us of a daily life which today is a memory.
https://www.corridorelephant.com/crealite
“LONGWY, was…” by Martial Verdier, or the story of a city that industrial desertion has made ghostly. Here it is still a question of the past, but the author uses it to better question us about what we are doing and will do in the future…
https://www.corridorelephant.com/longwy
On October 2, we launch issue 02 of SMARIS ÉLAPHUS, an annual review which is produced by three online magazines (Arts Hebdo Médias, TK-21 LaRevue, Corridor Éléphant). An experimental magazine, it opens its pages once a year to offer contemporary artists and authors the opportunity to express themselves on a chosen theme. N°02 will be about “Liberty & Insolences” then we are launching the Philippe Yvon book, “Urban Madness”, an urban and graphic look at these everyday details which escape our gaze
First published in TK-21
