A light and lively interview with photographer Laurent Scheer — his personal exhibition «Flying Houses», which was successfully held in many cities around the world, is open from April 15 to June 21 at the Lumiere Brothers Center for Photography.
Psychologies: The first thought when I see your floating houses is how good they would look on the pages of our magazine! We have a Dossier in every issue — several different texts around the same topic. What could be the dossier that your work illustrates?
Laurent Scheer: There are many psychological plots that would fit. Obviously, it can be flight, departure, escape … And also — the mother’s womb. This series was such a success, among other things, because houses are not only flying houses, but simply — houses. A house is the most personal thing we have. It is an extension of the mother’s belly from which we all come. Every time we try to recreate the same cozy, livable, soothing, warm place in every sense. In France, in any case, when we invite someone to our home, this is a very significant gesture: there can be different degrees of rapprochement, first you can have lunch together in a cafe, then invite you to a restaurant for dinner, and only then call home. If we call someone home — it’s not just like that, it has a special meaning. I receive a lot of letters and I see that all people perceive my work in completely different ways: for many it reminds me of something very intimate, or difficult times, or something else. Their imagination resonates with what they see, and it deeply hurts them.
“You can walk past the same house ten times and still not see it. But if you take it out of the row, isolate it, remove it from the urban context, “liberate” it from its neighbors, something new will happen.”
And what do you feel when the work is finished and you look at your “flying house”?
L. Sh .: Usually I have several parallel projects at once, I see how several houses grow before my eyes at once. Sometimes I put some social messages into them, for example, my attitude to the conditions in which people live in Paris. There are other, quieter, more serene houses, and sometimes I have four or five works in front of me at once, I ask myself: when should I stop? Is there anything else to add? They are like children who are growing up … It’s a very difficult feeling when I understand that enough is enough, it’s time to stop changing something in this house.
Are they all different for you?
L. Sh .: Certainly! They used quotes from films, photographs, photo reports. I thought about it a lot, and it seems to me that in this series I managed to combine two things: reportage photography, which is supposed to be true, so it is not customary to retouch it, and creativity. I was able to be creative, fantasize, create something from the field of art through reporting. Am I being clear enough?
Quite, especially since it is not always easy for people of a visual warehouse to express thoughts in words. In addition, this idea of combining reportage and fantasy is evident from the works themselves… Which house was the first in this series? I read that most of your houses come from such Parisian quarters as Menilmontant and Belleville.
L. Sh .: Indeed, I shot many houses there. These are such very colorful, popular quarters where people from all over the world live, many diverse influences are felt there, there are Chinese, Arabs, there are wealthier people, the so-called bohemian bourgeoisie, and all this together makes up the color of these quarters. That’s why I was interested in working with these houses. I am sorry that after a trip to Paris, tourists only remember the houses built under Baron Haussmann. Wide avenues on which the same knowledge is repeated 10 thousand times, it’s cute, of course, it’s graphic, but for me it’s interesting to scratch to find out what’s inside. When you start looking, you find another building, older, in which different people lived …
Let’s return to the question about the first house.
L. Sh .: Oh yes, the first one! I did not publish the very first one at all, it was a test, a sketch. And the first one published is called Harmony. This is a very simple house in the Parisian suburbs, and I found it very interesting because it is so simple that it looks like a child’s drawing. Everything is so, you know, symmetrical… But something strange came to my mind: he seems so calm, stable, everything in him is solid harmony, and meanwhile inside, maybe two people are quarreling, maybe everything is just seemingly calm.
Could it be only an appearance, an optical illusion?
L. Sh .: That’s it. Therefore, I like to look at the house in great detail, and there will definitely be details that tell a whole story, and I love stories. In Flying Houses, I found my way of telling stories, stories of people. Indeed, when you stand in front of a house and you feel that something spicy is being prepared in it — you don’t even see anyone in the window, you only smell the spices — then it’s easy for you to imagine that the inhabitants must have come from North Africa … Or, for example, you see a parabolic dish pointing towards Mecca. Such micro-details say a lot, if you are careful.
How many works are in this series now?
L. Sh .: In total, today I have 27-28 flying houses. The original concept of this project was to isolate a separate house. When you walk down the street, there are a lot of houses. You can walk past the same house ten times and still not see it. But if you take him out of the line, isolate him, something new happens: you take him out of the urban context, “liberate” him from his neighbors, and then something happens that is just very interesting to me.
How do you choose titles for your work?
L. Sh .: They all have such a double or even multi-layered meaning. I like the double messages. I do not set myself the goal of making sure that those who look at my photographs understand absolutely everything. I leave there quite definite references to films, hints, but no one is obliged to decipher them. I have so much fun, I encrypt something, but the audience will see their own, bright and positive, for example.
L. Sh .: For example, they think that a house with animals is Noah’s Ark. It doesn’t upset me. But if you get closer and look closely, you will notice that the animals are actually dead, because this is a taxidermist’s shop that sells stuffed animals. So double reading makes me happy. The story is the same with titles. Every time I put in them a double meaning, with a catch.
Do you ever imagine yourself in one of those flying houses? Or do you only look at them from the outside?
L. Sh .: Perhaps more outside. In general, I love Miyazaki’s films, books by Jules Verne, illustrations by artists of the XNUMXth century who tried to imagine our time … These are my guidelines. I don’t have to put myself inside a flying house to get my imagination going.
Are only Parisian houses “participating” in your project? Have you thought about filming the sequel in other cities?
L. Sh .: The project was made in Paris, simply because I live here. I love Paris, I love architecture, cinema, photography… But it could be another city. When this idea was born, I realized that I could express a lot of things in this way, touch on a lot of topics, both social and historical. I can resurrect homes that no longer exist, such as a theater that was razed to the ground 150 years ago. On the other hand, I can be inspired by some real house and tell a new story by placing my characters inside this house. In this sense, Paris has ceased to be of decisive importance, the stories that I can tell and that unfold behind the walls of these houses have come to the fore. But it’s also true that every time I come to a new city, I think: what could be filmed here? It’s a reflex, if you will. To create my house, I photograph many different details: the roof, tiles, downpipes, chimneys. All this I shoot many times with the lighting I need. And as a result, I now look at all the houses everywhere I go from this point of view. You never know in advance — it is quite possible that someday I will shoot in Moscow.