Trans Photographic Press has published Mythologies. Voyage dans nos lieux communs (Journey through our commonplaces) by Gilles Leimdorfer. They present it as follows:
Gilles Leimdorfer travels through France in search of a “national mythology.” He photographs with humor and tenderness the “commonplaces” of “eternal France” and its inhabitants.
He documents a completely subjective France experienced during childhood: Jacques Brel, Pierre Bachelet, Roland Barthes, Camembert, Verdun, the Demoiselles of Rochefort and the Executioner of Béthune, or Johnny Hallyday’s fans myths and photography construct, through small, successive touches, the picture of a country.
With his portraits, landscapes, kitsch objects and family photos, Gilles Leimdorfer offers, in a permanent back and forth between territory and personal history, a dive into a contemporary reality without nostalgia and returns in a long text to the personal links he has established with this country.
“Clichés? Legends? Double meanings lead me to wander. I ignore the North of compasses and ready-made answers; I prefer to wander the land to celebrate its ambiguity.
To confuse the issue and confuse those who follow me, I like to say that I document a poetry of everyday life, a totally subjective France learned during childhood when our eyes are wide openned.
This book is a personal map. Everyone is free to ask themselves why I didn’t photograph a particular place dear to their heart. I proceed by small touches in as many photos. Portraits of people and things, landscapes or details, it doesn’t matter, I don’t want to confine the country to its representations or to an aesthetic process.
I borrow from the bric-a-brac of my imagination the stages of this long journey that I hope will be endless. On site, “on the road,” I photograph my country as it appears to me without regretting what it could have been, to confront my dream France with its reality.”
Gilles Leimdorfer
Gilles Leimdorfer : Mythologies. Voyage dans nos lieux communs
Trans Photographic Press
Cloth-bound book,
hot-stamped cover
21 x 28 cm format, French style,
216 pages,
180 four-color printed photographs,
48 pages of text
EAN 9791090371736
€39.00
www.transphotographic.com
