Five years ago, the photographer Rémi Noël founded the publishing house Poetry Wanted in order to share his passion for images. His first series, called This is not a map, features photographic journeys in the form of road maps, each celebrating the encounter between a photographer and a place. From Bernard Plossu’s Lisbon to Ronan Guillou’s Las Vegas, to Julien Baer’s Paris.
Two years later, while working on a new book series, This is not a map / Motors, dedicated to legendary cars as seen in vernacular snapshots, Rémi Noël came up with the idea of doing a children’s series. While rummaging through family albums from around the world, he spotted little gems that could have been the handiwork of William Eggleston or Stephen Shore. Wonder-struck, he began sifting through these everyday scenes from the 1950s to 1970s, for the most part done in Kodachrome, in defiance of all the rules of photography but with a poetic flare.
Next came the idea of an “I spy…” sort of game that would encourage the little ones, and adults too, to closely look at every detail in the image. And thus the series Qui a vu (Who has seen) came to be. The first three books adopt the following themes: “Qui a vu un oiseau” (Who has seen a bird) invites children to locate animals; “Qui a vu un chapeau” (“Who has seen a hat”) is a hunt for objects; and “Qui a vu la coccinelle” (Who has seen the Beetle) is all about the legendary Volkswagen Beetle. Three books that will tickle the curiosity of the youngest readers and stimulate their observation skills.
The bygone world of these photographs is also tied up with Rémi Noël’s fascination with the United States and the country’s specific aesthetics. In the black-and-white images, he revisits the archetypes of the American dream: motels, their neon signs, stretches of the desert, and the highways that cut through them. He who makes images from bits and pieces—a flower, a newspaper, a miniature car model, a puzzle…—rediscover the poetry of the everyday which is his signature.
Collection Qui a vu
Published by Poetry Wanted
