Raymond Macherel: "Lisbonne/Roman/Photo"

Raymond Macherel's work makes no attempt to be documentary: the city of Lisbon was chosen because, like Paris, Rome or Prague, it is a city that one has always partly seen before actually going there. In "Lisbonne/Roman/Photo", two series of images are superimposed like the fragments of a story, creating an interplay of associations through which the narrative possibilities of photography are explored.

During Macherel's first trip to Lisbon, his desire to take photographs was focussed on one woman. When he returned a year later he was alone, he enjoyed his solitude through photography and made the journey into a lover's pilgrimage. Wherever he goes, seeking to test his desire to take photographs, the images of his first trip come back to him, projected onto the city's buildings, reflected in the rear view mirror of a tram one day, appearing ghost-like on his own knees the next day. The faded colours of the narrow streets, the warm stones of the steps, the tables of the city's restaurants, all bring back memories, just as the act of photography itself can sometimes unconsciously recall previous images. And at the centre of this Proustian interplay of memory and vision, an image of the city itself emerges.

A book to accompany the exhibition is published by Editions A Die, with text by Jean-Marie Gleize.


Biographical note

Raymond Macherel was born in Paris in 1970. He has been a photographer since 1991. He studied literature at the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Fontenay/Saint-Cloud, and now teaches French at a school in Aubervilliers in the Paris suburbs.

His work is regularly exhibited in France and abroad, and has been presented in the magazines 'Le Serpent à Plumes', 'L'Azur' and 'Nioques'. In November 1998, his first book entitled 'Et Pendant Qu'il La Regarde' (Carnet de Voyages no. 7) was published by Le Point du Jour, with text by Jacques Serena.