On a marché sur la lune
Les Matons (Éditions la fabrique sensible, 2025)
In this book and LP companion set, Christian Bonifas, one half of Les Matons, collects photobooth photos of himself and Hélène Fabre, and presents recorded answering machine messages on the accompanying record.
A translation of Christian's note on the back cover of the book:
It was 1993 when our neighbor Jean-Baptiste left us a long, surprising message on our answering machine.
We recorded the message using a Grundig tape recorder, and from that day on, we recorded all the messages that followed for ten years, without selection and in their entirety. In 2003, our tape recorder broke down, putting an end to this compulsive obsession.
In our approach to photobooths, as in life, Hélène and I have always flirted with this tendency to accumulate, these Prévert-style inventories without any hierarchy or specific goal, but with the secret desire to extract some insights from them.
In 2021, before her untimely death, we had envisaged this book/disc project with this selection of images and messages. So I have fulfilled this desire. There is no doubt that Hélène would have appreciated it, even if the final selection, deprived of her subjective expertise, is orphaned without her.
A big thank you to the talkative and concise contributors, anonymous and now gone, without whom this edition would not exist.
And a tender kiss to Hélène.
Christian Bonifas
We recorded the message using a Grundig tape recorder, and from that day on, we recorded all the messages that followed for ten years, without selection and in their entirety. In 2003, our tape recorder broke down, putting an end to this compulsive obsession.
In our approach to photobooths, as in life, Hélène and I have always flirted with this tendency to accumulate, these Prévert-style inventories without any hierarchy or specific goal, but with the secret desire to extract some insights from them.
In 2021, before her untimely death, we had envisaged this book/disc project with this selection of images and messages. So I have fulfilled this desire. There is no doubt that Hélène would have appreciated it, even if the final selection, deprived of her subjective expertise, is orphaned without her.
A big thank you to the talkative and concise contributors, anonymous and now gone, without whom this edition would not exist.
And a tender kiss to Hélène.
Christian Bonifas
Contributed by Christian Bonifas
