HORVATLAND - THE '90s - PROJECTS - WALKS IN BOULOGNE-BILLANCOURTGO TO HOME

2010, from Autobiography, in my iPad application Horvatland

The doctors insisted that I take some exercise, such as walking for at least half an hour per day – which I found boring, particularly in the residential suburb of Boulogne where my studio is located. So I took out the unused Leica, which had been presented to me on some occasion, but which I hadn’t even unpacked from its box. In fact I didn’t like that camera any more than I liked walking around Boulogne. In the case of the Leica, this was because I prefer reflex viewfinders, which give me a better idea of the depth of field. My dislike of Boulogne is because, in half an hour’s walk, I cannot see much else than closed shutters of ground floor windows, concrete blocks preventing cars from parking, benches that nobody sits on, railings enclosing pathetic little gardens and dustbins that should have been taken in the night before. On the other hand, exploring it presented a challenge, as it forced me to take a good look at my surroundings and might lead me to discoveries that would seem all the more valuable as there was so little to discover. But I also had an idea in the back of my mind. We are often fascinated by old postcards, because they represent places whose names are familiar to us and in which we may recognize some details, even though we have never seen them that way: yet another proof that photography tells us more about time than about place. The challenge was to anticipate the effect of time by a deliberate effort of my imagination: would a pedestrian in 2045 recognise this street corner of Route de la Reine? Will this two-storey house still be there? What will the dustbins look like – or the cars, the window displays, the trees? Sometimes, while I was photographing a trench in the asphalt, dug by the men of the Water Company to replace some pipe, a passing dog-walker would stop by and ask: ‘Excusez-moi, monsieur, but what exactly are you photographing?’ Now – only fifteen years later – I realise that I didn’t have to wait fifty years to find myself in a different world, and this makes me ponder (and shudder) about the acceleration of history. The two-storey house has been replaced by an office building, the law-abiding dog-walkers keep their dogs on the leash and, in their other hand, clutch the little shovel and plastic bag for the excrement, and no passer-by would stop me to ask questions, because they are all too busy yelling into their mobile phones. All the same, it may take a few more years before my photos of Boulogne awake as much nostalgia as Atget’s of Paris…