The Photographer
Nouveaux Déserts is the meeting of two passions: photography and the road trip. It is probably the most accomplished photographic project I have undertaken — one where I was able to combine adventure, encounters, aesthetics & personal convictions.
I was born almost with a camera in my hand. Part of my family worked in the world of photography (camera retailers, development laboratory), and that is where I learned everything: handling a film camera, developing my own negatives, working with light in the darkroom.
That time in the darkroom trained my eye in a way nothing else could have. It also taught me economy of gesture: when every shutter release costs something, you do not photograph lightly. You wait. You frame. You choose.
The other passion is the road. A child on a bicycle, a teenager on a Vespa, then an adult on a motorbike — and always this conviction that the best places appear on no planned itinerary. I do not plan. I get lost deliberately, methodically, convinced it is the only way to provoke chance and stumble upon what one was not looking for.
The early stages of this project were exhibited in the Off programme of the Rencontres Photographiques d’Arles in 2021.
Discover my other photographic projects: www.prunevielle.com