Navigation technologies are weakening, little by little, our ability to orient ourselves in unfamiliar environments. Unlike paper maps, which require constant eye contact with the environment, digital navigation systems act as blinders, reducing the landscape to the width of the road we are travelling. Several studies show how by delegating the task of orientation to cognitive artefacts such as navigation apps, our brains stop doing the heavy lifting required to create and maintain mental maps. Instead, when we try to figure out where we are, and memorize a street or a building, that place becomes ours.
Embracing this idea, In 2021 I worked on the PARCOURS project in the frame of an artist-in-residence program in the French city of Clermont-de-l'Oise organized by the Diaphane photographic centre in partnership with Photolux Festival.
Since the city was unfamiliar to me, I oriented myself to exploring two different approaches. I started focusing my attention on the relationship between the outward landscape and the intimate landscape linked to memories. This resulted in a set of portraits where I let the participants choose a place they felt connected to. People's stories gave me access to a whole imaginary world foreign to me, which transformed completely anonymous or abandoned places into meaningful places to my eyes. Through photography, I was able to encode these environments exploring the intimate relationship between the subject and the surroundings. Human presence provides a reading of the territory in an anthropological sense, but it also stimulates a more poetic, intimate and even nostalgic vision of those places.
A wasteland, a forest, an old school or a dimly lit glimpse, assert their dignity as the protagonists of a human story.
Places that are difficult to observe, especially if guiding our gaze is an itinerary calculated by an algorithm or prescribed by an application. Inhabitants were thus both subjects and creators of a collective emotional map based on their experiences.
During my stay, I focused another part of my work on being seduced by disorientation in order to distil images that could fill the lack of a personal imaginary about the city. I recorded any detail or landscape that caught my attention. These visual notes are the result of completely random walks and are totally unrelated to each other.
With time, the combination of the portraits and the images born from my wanderings started to be meaningful. Like a map, these fragments helped me to orient in a new and fantastic version of the city, but also a very personal one and more familiar to me. It became mine.
The idea of creating a map of Clermont is indirectly a tribute to the Cassini dynasty of cartographers and astronomers, who moved to France from Italy in the 17th century, to whom the city of Clermont named a high school, a street and dedicated a monument: the bust of César-François Cassini. His first map of France, completed by his son, provided the most accurate representation of the country whose realization took more than fifty years of work.
PARCOURS is on exhibition at Photaumnales 2022 festival in Clermont-de-l'Oise.
![Lionel Ollivier, mayor of Clermont de l'Oise, by the drawing room of College Fernel, formerly College Cassini. Built between 1936-37 and inaugurated in 1940, the building was occupied by the Germans during the war. It was decommissioned in 2003 and handed over free of charge to the Community of Municipalities. "I arrived here at the end of the 1960s, I was 10-11 years old and I stayed here until the Troisième (14-15 years old). I became president of the Community of Municipalities in 2014 and I said to myself, what are we doing here? Let's make a media library, fab-labs, recreational and cultural activities, theatre, pottery workshops. We worked from 2014 to 2020 on this project, which was finally approved. We are renovating it with a cultural function. It reminds me of when I was a student, and not only that: participating in a project, looking for grants, funding, and making this place come back to life, because even though it is of course still an imaginary reality, it is not bad to have worked there".]()
![Remy Moreau, by Ruelle du Collége. "As a child I used to pass by this small road with my grandmother to go to the park. Later, in adulthood I would pass by there by bike, then I would go there with my moped with my friends to look for cherries. Today I live in this street. I am 52 years old and I have spent most of my life in this street."]()
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![Claude Boulet, president of the Society of Archaeology and History of Clermont, at his home in Rue Général Pershing. The house contains numerous frescoes by his uncle, the painter Robert Boulet, who spent there most of his life, between 1933 and 1969. Robert Boulet was a pupil and son-in-law of the famous painter Maurice Denis. His nephew, Claude Boulet, says: "My uncle decorated this house. He painted a lot, but he never pursued success. There are many religious subjects here and many family portraits". Claude Boulet first lived in this house as a child: "In 1940 we came here because my parents had a house in Beauvais, which burnt down in the Beauvais fire. I was the last of six children. Then, in 1945, we moved back and my uncle Robert and aunt Noelle came back here again, until 1969 when they died . The house then went back to my parents and after my parents passed away, in the division, I wanted to own part of it. Now I am the owner of this house together with my granddaughter. I love this house because there are a lot of old documents about the local history and the decorations that my uncle Robert did".]()
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![Ambre Williams, fourteen years old, by l'Etang de Fay. "The first time I came here was four years ago. I used to have a lot of fun coming here with my friend Maelle. We used to fish with her dad's equipment. Once we caught three fishes. At first we kept them, but then we released them. My friend and I used to come here a lot before going to Mc Donald's because it is always nice to spend time here".]()
![Nelly Moreau, by the Chemin des Vignoble. "Chemin des Vignoble is a small path I used to walk as a child with my grandfather. He worked as a gardener for a local family and every Thursday, when there was no school, we would walk through here to get to the garden he tended. Thanks to him I started to love nature. I also love to walk and every now and then, with my group of women walkers, we pass by this path".]()
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![André Vantomme, former mayor of Clermont and former Senator of the Republic, by the Chapelle des Lardières. One of his great passions is churches. Over the years he has photographed thousands of churches around the world. "I am a nonbeliever, but for me, religion has no relationship with art. You can admire the beauty of churches without believing. When I was a child, my father and mother didn't go to church. But, I managed to make a separation between art and faith". André Vantomme is very attached to the Chapelle des Lardières: "Near the little church there was a very old tree. When I was mayor, I had to cut it down because it was dangerous. The people in the area were angry about this decision, but then the tree grew back on its own, from its roots".]()
![Isabelle Trioux, librarian, by the Fitz-James footbridge. "When I was little I lived in Fitz-James, which was a small village and, in Clermont, there was the only library really close, that was really the only place to go. I used to go there to do homework. And for me it was the opening to the world. I didn't know anything. In a small village, in Clermont, the library was an important place. You had all the knowledge. I went there on foot. I like this footbridge because it's the place I used to walk from Fitz-James to Clermont all the time and it's a place that people don't really know about because we don't walk that much nowadays. It's a bit old-fashioned, really typical of the 1960s".]()
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![Virginie Depressoir, actress, at the Donjon in Clermont. Behind her is the cell where Louise Michel, teacher, revolutionary activist and feminist, was imprisoned in 1883. "The Donjon de Clermont is a ruin that has been abandoned and forgotten by its inhabitants. It is an interesting place. It was originally a castle, then it became a prison for women. When I learned that Louise Michel, a great revolutionary, was imprisoned here, and because I am an actress, I wanted to play the role of Louise Michel and also to try to be inspired by this place. It is a fragile building, but one that remains very strong, it is impressive. It's also a mysterious place, it's even a little scary".]()
![Guillaume Dussez, in front of the school Notre-Dame de la Providence. "I was born in Clermont. Clermont is my heart city. I did all my nursery and primary schooling there, up to CM2 (10-11 years old). In the mornings I was parked here with my mum, waiting for the guardian to come and open the door. My parents were divorced, but they both lived nearby. I have a lot of good memories here, there are friends who hang out at the video game shop where I work that I met here 30 years ago. Then, it's in the heart of the city'.]()
![Léa David, at the cinema hall "Paul Lebrun" of Clermont. In 2019, Léa became director of the cinema, aged just 22. "I've been linked to this cinema since I was a child. I used to come here with my family and, later, also with friends. I have many memories here. I built a large part of my film culture and my culture in general here. I love this place very much. When I was proposed to take over, I immediately said yes. For me it is a place full of history, full of important films. I have always been fascinated by cinema and it is this cinema that made me want to work in the field. It was the logical consequence. This is also the only cinema with a single screen among all the communes of the Pays du Clermontois community".]()
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![Ahmed Iskou, social worker at the municipality of Clermont, in front of his house in Les Sables district. "What I like about this place is that you have the impression of being in people's living rooms. Do you see the windows around us? This is the living room of the houses around here and we are in the middle. We are outside, but at the same time we are in the living room, with the people. It's a sort of extension of these houses, but it's collective". Ahmed Iskou was born in Morocco (his parents were on holiday there), but he has lived most of his life in Les Sables: "I grew up here, I'm 45 years old and I have only good memories of this neighborhood, really nice things. The big difference is that here people meet and greet each other. They don't necessarily know each other, but they talk to each other. Maybe that's what I like about this neighborhood. It's more lively, it's more mixed, it's more colorful and there's a nice human warmth".]()
![Thibaut Bernard, by the bi-cross field in Les Sables district. "At the edge of the district there is this large bi-cross field where I used to come to ride the bike, with many other people from the district. It's a field that was partially created by the people of the neighborhood. When I was a kid I used to do bi-cross competitions all over the Oise region, but I really started here. So, it's a district that I still like because I spent my whole childhood here. It's the neighborhood that I grew up in. I still have acquaintances and friends who live here and it's a very lively area of the city of Clermont".]()
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![Cheick Sine, by Les Sables district. "I've lived in this neighborhood until now. I often frequent this place. There is a lot of traffic here. The best way to see as many people as possible during the day is to stand here. I come here waiting for someone I can talk to. Or sometimes to stay quiet, to clear my head a little bit. Sometimes people ask me why I'm alone in this place. They think I'm crazy, but I'm not".]()
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![Aurore Merchez, by the former sports field of the Jeanne d'Arc secondary school: "Over there was the gymnasium of the Jeanne d'Arc secondary school, which has now moved to Agnetz and here there's nothing left. The school was supposed to become a large car park and the sports field has completely disappeared. This was the handball court and and right next to it there was the basketball court. I don't think I've been here since I finished secondary school. I didn't set foot here again until yesterday, when you asked me to send you some scouting photos. And when I saw the court from above I thought, 'Ah! I'll descend and see what's left of it', and here it is, a wasteland. I don't think I thought about those school years until I got back down here. And it's very strange, because I thought that today there is no physical trace of my secondary school years, because the school is no longer there. Those were also the only years I practiced sports, because after secondary school I had some health problems and I was exempt for the rest of my schooling. So the only years I did sports at school were here".]()
![Cathy Renault, at the Chatelier Park. "For me, the Chatelier is my whole childhood, circumstances brought me here. I used to come here on my bike. There were gym classes with the school Notre-Dame de la Providence, or afternoons after school. The Chatelier is all of that. It's the place of the heart, it's a beautiful lung of oxygen in the city and it's so nice, it's pretty. When we were kids, we used to go into the water tower over there. We weren't necessarily supposed to go, but we went anyway, like all the kids".]()
Embracing this idea, In 2021 I worked on the PARCOURS project in the frame of an artist-in-residence program in the French city of Clermont-de-l'Oise organized by the Diaphane photographic centre in partnership with Photolux Festival.
Since the city was unfamiliar to me, I oriented myself to exploring two different approaches. I started focusing my attention on the relationship between the outward landscape and the intimate landscape linked to memories. This resulted in a set of portraits where I let the participants choose a place they felt connected to. People's stories gave me access to a whole imaginary world foreign to me, which transformed completely anonymous or abandoned places into meaningful places to my eyes. Through photography, I was able to encode these environments exploring the intimate relationship between the subject and the surroundings. Human presence provides a reading of the territory in an anthropological sense, but it also stimulates a more poetic, intimate and even nostalgic vision of those places.
A wasteland, a forest, an old school or a dimly lit glimpse, assert their dignity as the protagonists of a human story.
Places that are difficult to observe, especially if guiding our gaze is an itinerary calculated by an algorithm or prescribed by an application. Inhabitants were thus both subjects and creators of a collective emotional map based on their experiences.
During my stay, I focused another part of my work on being seduced by disorientation in order to distil images that could fill the lack of a personal imaginary about the city. I recorded any detail or landscape that caught my attention. These visual notes are the result of completely random walks and are totally unrelated to each other.
With time, the combination of the portraits and the images born from my wanderings started to be meaningful. Like a map, these fragments helped me to orient in a new and fantastic version of the city, but also a very personal one and more familiar to me. It became mine.
The idea of creating a map of Clermont is indirectly a tribute to the Cassini dynasty of cartographers and astronomers, who moved to France from Italy in the 17th century, to whom the city of Clermont named a high school, a street and dedicated a monument: the bust of César-François Cassini. His first map of France, completed by his son, provided the most accurate representation of the country whose realization took more than fifty years of work.
PARCOURS is on exhibition at Photaumnales 2022 festival in Clermont-de-l'Oise.
