Under the title “Hakanai Sonzai”, which can be translated as “feeling like an ephemeral creature”, the photographer and visual artist Pierre-Elie de Pibrac has brought together the destinies of Japanese people on the margins. This series constitutes the second stage of his trilogy on resilience, begun in Cuba among sugar cane farmers and which must continue in Israel. In this work, exhibited at the Guimet Museum until January 15, he “tells the story of individuals who seek to understand their identity in the face of the weight of society’s rules”, he emphasizes.
The images were taken between December 2019 and August 2020. Attracted by this archipelago where “nature has imposed its law to define the culture of preciousness and control”, the 30-year-old Frenchman settled with his family in a traditional house near the Silver Pavilion, in Kyoto, and the Path of Philosophy which leads there. In this typical setting, he read more, watched films, took Japanese lessons. “I didn’t photograph anything for the first two months. I understood poorly, I had difficulty entering into the nature-culture link,” he remembers.
Then the blur cleared. Pierre-Elie de Pibrac had encounters in Kyōto, in the mining town of Yūbari (North) or in Motoyama (in the west, on the island of Shikoku) with yakuzas, hikikomori (who can no longer leave their homes), jōhatsu (those “evaporated”, or voluntarily disappeared) and survivors of the Fukushima disaster of 2011. He gave some disposable devices and notebooks to encourage them to confide in them.
A long break
“In this country where the inhabitants don’t talk much, I had to be very patient to break the ice and gently enter the lives of those whose stories I wanted to tell. » Drawing on these notes and photos, and assisted by his wife, Olivia, the photographer recreated a key moment in the life of the Japanese photographed in places emptied of tourists by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Pierre-Elie de Pibrac took all his photos in camera: “What I like is not to create a snapshot but a photo like a performance that tells a story. » The technique requires a long break time. “The person is impressed by the room [appareil très grand format]but ends up making it his own. She enters this world and knows it is a pivotal moment in her life. » He alternates color and black and white, portraits and landscapes.
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