Bernard Pharabet
NOT YOU
What I still hear is a muffled rumour, and it is life that is like the sea beyond – Jean Claude Pirotte
It was in this post-covid state that I took part in a night shoot of an old district of Saint-Étienne, the colline des Pères, similar to the colline de Fourvière in Lyon. The interstices of the visible, the labyrinths of strange forms of ubiquitous street art, vibrant in the lights of the foliage, and my inner anxiety that something had been irretrievably lost between the people; I began to photograph. That’s why I was there.
The series would have had every chance of stagnating safely on my hard drive. For me, the spontaneous photographic capture of a NOT YOU tag at the end of the journey was the key to motivating and supporting this selection.
The mise en abîme of my inner intranquillity took shape in a set of images that seemed to emerge from an infinite depth of shadow; the movement that inhabits them is no longer that of photography, not yet that of cinema. Rather, it was the movement of narrative, of storytelling.
Don’t wait for me tonight because the night will be black and white – Gerard de Nerval
2020
France
