Please introduce yourself—what is your name, where are you from, what do you do?
Hello, I'm Benoît Allouis. I am from a small town in Brittany (western France) but I have spent all my adult life in Paris and New York City. My primary job has nothing to do with photography or the arts in general.
What is your relationship with photography, and how did you get into it?
For quite a long time, photography was nothing more than an hobby, something I would experiment with occasionally. Around 2013 my grand-mother gifted me my first film camera (a Nikon FE2) and shortly after that in Paris I saw two shows of Robert Adams and Lewis Baltz back-to-back.
This was a real aesthetic shock which opened up a whole new world of possibilities. Gradually photography has become an integral part of my life, and now I coudn't live without it. It's taking me to places I would have never imagined. It gives me a license to engage with the world.
What do you think triggers you to photograph in a certain moment? Is it planned or solely driven by intuition?
I would say it is a mix of both. I tend to do a lot of planning, when I can't go out to photograph I spend a solid amount of time on Google Maps/Street View, exploring places that I feel drawn to. But when finally I am out there, I always leave room for wandering and surprises—and I am rarely disappointed.
What is the story you want your pictures to tell?
I am not too interested in telling a story in the strict narrative sense of the term. I am mostly concerned with issues around ‹representation›. How to capture the essence of a place in a photograph. Why certain landscapes are absent from collective consciousness, and how to make them visible and memorable.
Moving away from the center and the picturesque, and paying attention to the peripheral, the underrepresented, the mundane. All that.
Which city would you like to visit the most, and why?
I have always been drawn to cities which are symbolically loaded, and Los Angeles is one of them. It has such a rich visual history that it is almost mythological to me. I only got to spend a few days there but it was years ago, and I did not have time to explore the way I would now. The possibilities there seem endless.
What is your personal relationship to cities, and how do you perceive them as places in general?
Cities are my natural habitat, and they are at the very center of my work. There is so much we can learn from a careful study of the way we occupy space and shape the urban environment (consciously or unconsciously).
Cities tell our collective story—in a way they are our involuntary biographies, for everybody to read! I have always thought more interesting and eloquent to picture places, rather than people, but this requires to pause and really pay attention.
Regarding your project Blind Spots: what was your intention, and how did you come up with the idea?
Behind Blind Spots is a realization that the visual representation of the city of Paris is fundamentally incomplete and biased. Although the French capital is one of the most photographed places on Earth, only a small fraction of the city gets all the attention, while the least ‹desirable› areas are virtually absent from the collective imagination.
As an attempt to bridge that gap, I set out to methodically survey the north-east of the Grand Paris, where most industrial activities are concentrated and which is home to many underprivileged communities. I want to confront the viewer with those landscapes which we do not see, or chose not to see. To create photographs that will make them remarkable, or at least, noticeable.
Which project did you never finish?
I was planning a project on the State of Jefferson, which—in brief—is the attempt to create a new state out of remote parts of Northern California and Oregon in order to secede from the urban liberals of the coast. It would have been a follow-up to my very first project, Malheur.
Then Covid hit… and I was grounded. After a few months of not being able to travel to the USA, I decided to focus on things closer to home.
What is that one thing you have never managed to photograph and is now gone for good?
I have always been lucky with «things», probably because I tend to work in areas that are close to where I live. But it has happened a few times that a building or structure was destroyed/torn down only days after I took a photograph of it.
If you could travel back/forth in time, what advice would you give your younger/older self?
Stop thinking, and go out there! The world is full of surprises.
What do you prefer saying: «to take a photograph» or to «make a photograph», and why?
To me the difference between the two expressions has something to do with workflow. «Taking a photograph» evokes the quick snaps of street photography and decisive moments. As I work in a fairly slow manner, with a view camera on a tripod, a limited amount of film and some planning beforehand, «making a photograph» would best describe my practice.
What is the most interesting experience you have had while photographing?
The amount of hostility and sometimes violence that I have experienced while photographing (or trying to) inert things in public spaces. Visibly the presence of a camera on a tripod is quite distressing for a lot of people.
If it wasn’t for photography, what would you be interested in doing instead?
I would probably be into urban planning or investigative journalism. Or something that is strongly connected to the preservation of the environment.
How would you describe one of your pictures to a blind person?
My photographs tend to be quite precise and formal. They are either very hard and mineral, or very organic and lush. I have been told that they are all very quiet.
What are you currently working on, and—if there is—what is your next project or journey?
I forgot to mention that Blind Spots has two chapters: one in Paris, another in New York. I am still missing a few pictures in each city. Then I will have to find a way to give this project a material existence, hopefully in the form of a book.
Thank you, Benoît!
What is your personal relationship to cities, and how do you perceive them as places in general?
Cities are my natural habitat, and they are at the very center of my work. There is so much we can learn from a careful study of the way we occupy space and shape the urban environment (consciously or unconsciously).
Cities tell our collective story—in a way they are our involuntary biographies, for everybody to read! I have always thought more interesting and eloquent to picture places, rather than people, but this requires to pause and really pay attention.
Regarding your project Blind Spots: what was your intention, and how did you come up with the idea?
Behind Blind Spots is a realization that the visual representation of the city of Paris is fundamentally incomplete and biased. Although the French capital is one of the most photographed places on Earth, only a small fraction of the city gets all the attention, while the least ‹desirable› areas are virtually absent from the collective imagination.
As an attempt to bridge that gap, I set out to methodically survey the north-east of the Grand Paris, where most industrial activities are concentrated and which is home to many underprivileged communities. I want to confront the viewer with those landscapes which we do not see, or chose not to see. To create photographs that will make them remarkable, or at least, noticeable.
Which project did you never finish?
I was planning a project on the State of Jefferson, which—in brief—is the attempt to create a new state out of remote parts of Northern California and Oregon in order to secede from the urban liberals of the coast. It would have been a follow-up to my very first project, Malheur.
Then Covid hit… and I was grounded. After a few months of not being able to travel to the USA, I decided to focus on things closer to home.
What is that one thing you have never managed to photograph and is now gone for good?
I have always been lucky with «things», probably because I tend to work in areas that are close to where I live. But it has happened a few times that a building or structure was destroyed/torn down only days after I took a photograph of it.
If you could travel back/forth in time, what advice would you give your younger/older self?
Stop thinking, and go out there! The world is full of surprises.
What do you prefer saying: «to take a photograph» or to «make a photograph», and why?
To me the difference between the two expressions has something to do with workflow. «Taking a photograph» evokes the quick snaps of street photography and decisive moments. As I work in a fairly slow manner, with a view camera on a tripod, a limited amount of film and some planning beforehand, «making a photograph» would best describe my practice.
What is the most interesting experience you have had while photographing?
The amount of hostility and sometimes violence that I have experienced while photographing (or trying to) inert things in public spaces. Visibly the presence of a camera on a tripod is quite distressing for a lot of people.
If it wasn’t for photography, what would you be interested in doing instead?
I would probably be into urban planning or investigative journalism. Or something that is strongly connected to the preservation of the environment.
How would you describe one of your pictures to a blind person?
My photographs tend to be quite precise and formal. They are either very hard and mineral, or very organic and lush. I have been told that they are all very quiet.
What are you currently working on, and—if there is—what is your next project or journey?
I forgot to mention that Blind Spots has two chapters: one in Paris, another in New York. I am still missing a few pictures in each city. Then I will have to find a way to give this project a material existence, hopefully in the form of a book.
Thank you, Benoît!
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