Ordre aléatoire des images
Marco Boubille (Les presses du réel, 2020)
From the publisher's description of the book, "Marco Boubille makes speak the images of Photomaton that he picks up in the streets and collects, in a long serial poem."
And from a machine translation of man excerpt only provided in the original French:
"In the beginning was the image. Or the photo board. The one that mechanically comes out next to the screen in the booth called the Photomaton and that is part of the 'furniture' of our cities. The author of this book, M.B. in the text, has 'collected' the failed, torn, stained, soiled, discarded photos that he picked up in Paris on the streets and sidewalks. Then these images ended up becoming texts.
Spoken (written or described) by the writer-collector, as close as possible to their material reality (the smell of the booth, the screw stool, the little thud of the engine, the curtain and flash, the synthetic voice, etc.). They then began to speak themselves, a factual and familiar prose, slightly deviated.
What do they say? In these uninhabitable places, it is faces, bodies, that speak and talk to each other, facing the mirror, facing the darkness of their existence. Bodies constrained for identity or intimacy photos (perhaps). A matter of position, of dressing, of make-up. Some broken portraits of anonymous people delivered to the social cruelty (the interview, the HR department, the job or the contract...).
A serial book, about the disorder of things and the order of life, a long realistic or documentary poem, made of strangled monologues. A political book, therefore."
"Was this photo like a simple forgotten sentence that one searches for in vain and then gives up?
Contributed by Christian Bonifas
