“Why take yourself seriously? In 50 years, maybe more, I will be buried deep, and it will be too late, so let’s do everything right now, beautiful things, discover and be marveled.”
The world never stands still. I would love to stop the time sometimes. Stop. Pause. Beautifully preserved. But maybe I just want to be somewhere else. Not here. But there. Where the sun goes down. The fire crackles. And where the wind hisses through the grasses. We had an inspiring and deep talk with currently Paris based photographer Valentin Duciel who´s images are the pure magic of freedom, nature and wilderness.
Tell us everything about “Flesh and Stone”
With friends, we will head towards Spain mid-February. We’ll be on the road, looking for adventure, the pure things in life, to meet locals, roamers etc, in order to make a photo and video report in analog.
This experience is a way for me to confront the vision of what life is, that I have forged through my education, encounters and experiences, to the one we are taught in our contemporary society: to become “better” consumers and professionals. To me, life is too short to run after money and false recognition.
Like Kerouac’s “Dharma Bums”, we will offer ourselves billionaires pleasures, which even billionaires don’t have the courage to pay for! Life isn’t about money, big guns or rotten cars … We are flesh, fleeting life, we are nothing in the immensity of the universe: so what is the use in running after these modern futilities? Warming up naked in the sun, burning in the rain, traveling with buddies looking for surprise and wonder, that’s life for me. Why take yourself seriously? In 50 years, maybe more, I will be buried deep, and it will be too late, so let’s do everything right now, beautiful things, discover and be marveled.
I’ll document my trip and adventures with film photographs and a super 8 video, in order to put together an exhibition, hopefully more than one, and a self-published book, if the funding allows it. By the way, there’s only a few days left to crowd fund this project, here’s the link : www.kisskissbankbank.com/flesh-and-stone. Thanks so much to everyone for helping me bring this project, that is so close to my heart, to life.
“There’s no ultimate freedom, life itself has boundaries.”
Your first book ” Shelter from the Storm” is also about to be published soon in France and Japan. What can the readers expect from it? And why did you choose this title?
That’s right. We’re finishing it up. It’s going to be an unpretentious book, just like my pictures. I chose this title cause it’s one of my favorite Dylan’s songs, and it sums up pretty well my worldview: adventures, friends, the road… leaving everything and nothing behind. A shelter from the storm, a refuge against modern society. There will only be my pictures, from my beginning, without a story or a thread. Anyone is free to make their own.
“I stopped being a cook cause the trade is outrageous, it’s modern slavery, the dregs of society.”
I read that you were a cook before. Why did you quit that profession?
Haha, I was! I don’t regret to have tried, I actually love cooking just as much today, but I rather do it for my friends now. I stopped being a cook cause the trade is outrageous, it’s modern slavery, the dregs of society. I’m happy I tried it and realized what was the state of modern labour, at its rawest: you can’t eat if you’re late, you work 75 hours a week and are paid 35, you’re scolded and abused.. There’s also a lot of alcohol, not the one you enjoy at parties, pathological alcohol, there’s sexism, physical and verbal violence.. That job helped me realize a lot of things, most of all that life is too short to be chained to work.
On your instagram you use the #sixties a lot. What fascinates you about that time?
I think the Sixties left a wind of freedom and creativity, people slowly freed themselves from their chains, the confinements of society like work, religion, sexism, war.. all the things we left behind in order to be happy and alive, are coming back today with a new strength, cause we need money and comfort.
If you can pack only 3 things for travelling what would they be?
A backpack to bring back mementos like dried flowers, bones, shells… a notebook and my camera.
“I like the mountains and the ocean, they make us aware of our place in this immensity: their power in the face of our helplessness, their purity in the middle of the dirt.”
In which place do you feel the most peaceful?
I like the mountains and the ocean, they make us aware of our place in this immensity: their power in the face of our helplessness, their purity in the middle of the dirt. That feeling of contemplation you have when you’re facing the elements soothes and calms me.
To you freedom means…
There’s no ultimate freedom, life itself has boundaries. I think freedom is a concept you come up with personally, and most of the time it’s an illusion. There’s a widely spread misconception that work and the consumer society that are “given” bring us any kind of comfort or freedom. I’m against this idea, this system only produces aliens that in this macabre dance, live a life without enjoying it and living it with their gut. I don’t think we should become extremists in our quest for freedom, but we have to do things in order to come to a balance, an equilibrium of wellbeing that seems fair and makes us feel good.»
www.instagram.com/valentinduciel
