beaux livres : photo, architecture, art

Since 1985, Jean-Christophe Béchet has been photographing Europe, traveling from city to city. Today, he knows virtually every nook and cranny of this continent. But which Europe are we talking about? There’s economic Europe, political Europe, geographical Europe, football Europe… There are many Europes. From Gibraltar to Kyiv, from Reykjavik to Istanbul. Some borders are crumbling, others are closing. Cross-fertilization, melting pot, mixing, globalization. Europeanization? Does a Western Europe and an Eastern Europe still exist? And a Southern Europe around the Mediterranean? Sometimes, words quickly lose their meaning. By losing its last syllable, Europe has now become a mere currency.

“To question Europe is to question one’s own European identity. In what way am I European? Beyond the economic questions that too often dictate the ‘European sentiment,’ I want to try to construct this puzzle like a long musical melody rooted in the reality of the last thirty years. In 1955, Henri Cartier-Bresson published The Europeans. Sixty years later, when everyone is constantly talking about Europe, such a subject seems impossible to contemplate… Yet isn’t the challenge of photography precisely to offer a poetic and documentary vision when words, figures, and analyses have already exhausted their interpretation of reality?” Jean-Christophe Béchet

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