Boreally

Here is how I discovered photography, and how I continued from there.

That is Pierre-Henry Muller hiding, indeed I usually prefer being behind the lens to before it.

Ever since I first discovered the hidden world surrounding our daily lives, the discovery of which is called Urban Exploration, Urbex or Infiltration, I have been striving to render the invisible or forgotten human activities visible.

Urban Exploration regroups several disciplines:

- "cataphily": the exploration of underground mines and catacombs
- technical voids and galleries
- industrial wastelands: dilapidated factories
- private or historic buildings that are abandoned and forgotten
- "roofophily": the roofs of buildings

All these places allow a vision of the world around us more than by what is still visible and imposed by the architects, but by what our ancestors left in these places before us. Historians and archaeologists deal with preserving our remote past but they neglect our near past, the one in which our parents and grandparents evolved.

Yet this cultural and industrial heritage especially of the 20th century is being gradually wiped out. Little or no importance is given to these sites whose significance is proportional to entire careers for the majority of employees. A nearby factory was the foster-mother of a whole town; all the families were directly or indirectly linked to its activity. You worked in the family; you passed on the knowledge. In these factories you could find all the building trades so as to be autonomous. You have to admit that we are a long way off the service providers and the loss of the knowledge by the companies.

You often hear .Paris the city of light. but before the arrival of electricity it was .Paris the white city. because of the white construction material and the fine plaster like the .blanc de Meudon.. All the material that was used for the building of this reputation comes from limestone, gypsum and chalk quarries, extracted from the grounds below Paris and the larger Paris Region comprising the Oise and Aisne departments.

Imagine now all the possible sites where man left his trace: traces of a stone cutter, a quarry-worker who for long years in the feeble light of a few acetylene lamps extracted blocks of stone. Paris would be nothing without them, yet unfortunately they are the men in the shadows, they are not spoken of, and all traces of their activities are wiped out.

This is my main motivation, to identify, list, understand the history and of course photograph to keep a trace of what can still be saved and visited.

I am often asked about it, and although the camera is not the decisive part, it contributes greatly to the result.

When I was younger I worked with conventional material, but for lack of means I did not use it as often as I would have liked. The digital transition was helped along by the photographer.s budget.

- digital reflex Canon EOS 20D
- Canon EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM, greatly appreciated when you have no room to step backwards
- Canon EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM
- Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM
- Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS USM
- Extension tube set to reduce the distance scale - Flash Canon Speedlite 580 EX
- Tripod Manfrotto 190ProB and head Manfrotto 484RC2
- Monopod Manfrotto 680B
- Nodal Ninja 5 panoramic head + RD16 rotator
- a collection of neutral density grey filters from ND2 to ND8, standard or graduated both hard-edge and soft-edge
- remote control, separate flash, coloured gelatines and other improvised stuff that is always handy
You can add to this the indispensable material for lighting in different ways, for access, for transporting the material safely to these often hostile sites.

You will certainly see on some photos the use of other lenses or other camera bodies, this is material I borrowed briefly during outings with fellow photographers.

Like many children, I always liked to play with my father things (photo camera, video camera, computers,...). Very quickly and without really knowing the different techniques, I started to respect the framing for portraits and the various landscapes I discovered during the holidays. Holding the video camera, I played with the low angle shot and fluid movements with relatively stable moves. Whether in video or in photography, my aim was simply not to do things like everyone else to "immortalise" an event. This kind of film and photos at an age of about 10 to 12 years gave me the acknowledgement of my family for taking good family and holiday photos. It was around that time that I discovered the admiration people have for a photo with certain technical conditions in addition to the subject. I was finally won over when by mistake I took the same picture twice, once a centred picture in full frame in a rush and the other with a little more composition with three subjects (principal, secondary and force line).

At my grammar school there was a photo lab with a darkroom. I signed up in order to discover how to develop and enlarge a photo. I enjoyed it, discovering the pinhole, the development of black and white film rolls and the enlarger. At my grammar school there was a photo lab with a darkroom. I signed up in order to discover how to develop and enlarge a photo. I enjoyed it, discovering the pinhole, the development of black and white film rolls and the enlarger.

At At that time I had a small mass market camera but I did not use it much because of the cost of film rolls, development and prints. However my great passion for aviation made me take a dozen of film rolls at each Salon du Bourget. That allowed me to work some more with the enlarger at school to make my first prints in big size in addition to the 20 by 30 colour prints I ordered at the photo shop.that time I had a small mass market camera but I did not use it much because of the cost of film rolls, development and prints. However my great passion for aviation made me take a dozen of film rolls at each Salon du Bourget. That allowed me to work some more with the enlarger at school to make my first prints in big size in addition to the 20 by 30 colour prints I ordered at the photo shop.

Another experience that interested me a lot were the natural science laboratories equipped with some very good microscopes on which was mounted a ring of lenses replacing the eyepiece of a photo camera. Our teacher organised a few sessions with selected samples showing the strange and funny forms nature can create. I decided to do everything in black and white in order to be able to control all the phases from taking the picture to enlarging it via the development of the negatives.

School was over, computer science studies had begun. At this time of the boom in digital photography, I bought a digital camera by Fujifilm which was at the time one of the rare ones to react rapidly (later it turned out that it is very slow compared to what is available nowadays). At a time when Sony was still on digital cameras with 3 1/2 inch disks I chose memory sticks and normal batteries which are more practical for all-day outings. I was very far from the joy of mirror reflex cameras, as this camera doesn't allow me to do any setting except for turning off the flash which provokes a pause of half a second maximum raising the film speed slightly. Still, lacking better equipment, it allowed me to take some nice pictures.

During my studies I contacted the media association of the school which is primarily centred on video. We realised a few reports on the school events (skiing trip, integration course, parties, ...). Even if overall these reportings were interesting, I didn't find an artistic aspect in our work of shooting, only the cutting allowed for some liberties.

Studies were over, I had moved on in life, and with someone nice to share it too, the work routine occupied my days, sports made a return on weekends. By chance, during a bike ride in the forest I discovered a bunker, which attracted all my attention. Being curious by nature I tried to find out what a bunker was doing in the middle of a forest. My research led me to meet other lovers of urban exploration. After some exchanges, I learned the history of the place and a little later I was contacted and offered a visit to a quarry. I accepted gladly as the quarries of the catacombs were a world I wanted to discover and get to know better than just through my books on the subject that I knew by heart. After a photo expedition to Safea in Belgium (considered by many to be the reference in terms of industrial fallows), a factory that was soon to be destroyed, I returned to Paris disappointed because of messed-up photos due to a too high film speed on a borrowed camera. In the following week, I decided to buy my own equipment and return to take photos on the next weekends.

That is where my adventure into photographic territory began ...