What does it mean to be from here? How can each inhabitant make a region the size of Austria his or her own? What unifying narrative can link so many cultural, geographical and economic singularities?
D’ici, ça ne parait pas si loin was produced by the LesAssociés collective throughout the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region. Conceived on the occasion of territorial reform, this project aims to put into perspective the issues of a fragmented society faced with increasingly broad horizons – large regions, European construction, globalization.
Mobilized for 4 years, from September 2015 to June 2019, the collective’s 5 photographers approached the project in three stages.
Le Périmètre questions the relationship between rurality and metropolis. Photographers took it in turns to survey the region’s 1,900 km of land borders, highlighting the feeling of abandonment experienced by the inhabitants of these borders.
Le Voyage aquitain takes the time of the TGV Paris-Bordeaux as its unit of measurement. This time has determined 4 destinations within 2 hours of Bordeaux: La Coquille (Dordogne), Fumel (Lot-et-Garonne), Pau-Mourenx (Pyrénées-Atlantiques) and La Rochelle (Charente-Maritime). Each location dealt with social themes such as immigration, work or ageing…
Le Conte perdu explores the relationship between storytelling and the environment. Five geographical environments were chosen: the Dordogne river, from Bort-les-Orgues to Bec d’Ambès; the forest in Creuse; the Landes coastline in Contis; the Pyrenees in Haute-Soule and the Poitevin marshes in Deux-Sèvres. D’ici, ça ne parait pas si loin (From here, it doesn’t seem so far away ) was created with a view to making the region its own, and has been touring the whole of the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region for the past 2 years. The aim is to reach out to all audiences. In the same vein, the project has been adapted into a 52-minute film and a book published by Le Bec en l’air.
Invited by La Villa Pérochon, the LesAssociés collective revisited the project for the Rencontres de la jeune Photographie internationale. Today’s itinerary is structured around three themes: the intimate sphere, the relationship with the Other, and the environment and its imaginary world. Each aspect expresses, through the photographers’ dialogue, what contributes to and builds our relationship with the world.