Home » News » RENNES. PHOTOGRAPHIC WALK 1 KM FROM UNIDIVERS WITH MARTIN BOUDIER

RENNES. PHOTOGRAPHIC WALK 1 KM FROM UNIDIVERS WITH MARTIN BOUDIER


How well do you know your neighborhood of residence, hidden places or unexpected corners? You will be surprised, but novelty and wonder can be found at your fingertips, in a very small area. The photographer Martin Boudier lives near the Unidivers editorial office and tells us about it with the Instagram photo series ” One Hour Walks », Carried out during the two successive confinements of 2020. Who said that discovering a kilometer around your home was boring?

Do we really take the time to survey the surroundings of our home? Have you ever lost yourself on purpose in your neighborhood? To take advantage of the nearby small parks that you don’t notice right away, let your feet soak in the sublime Vilaine (after all, this one is not the best idea at the moment), take short walks on it. along the river towards places still unexplored, perhaps unusual nooks … Humans dream of travel and escape, adventure and the unknown. He dreams of climbing snow-capped mountains, of lightly basking the pill on an abandoned beach (shellfish and crustaceans…). After all, isn’t the grass greener elsewhere? The unknown has this exhilarating something, excitement gives butterflies in the belly (the kind we love) …

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Project “One_hour_walks”. First containment – 261m # 09 © Martin Boudier, Rennes.

However, these days, flying to the other side of the world is more of a journey than a vacation. A case set up under high security, KGB and FBI combined, PCR test in support and fourteen ensured depending on the destination. Despite the current difficulty in projecting oneself, is it possible to draw a minimum of positive from confinements, past or future? Before dropping the ax of indignation and leading Unidivers to the stake for unspeakable words, let’s admit that the surrounding unease was conducive to reflection and even sometimes to a new burst of creativity. Many people have retrained and adopted a profession more suited to their desires, multiple projects have flourished and an unprecedented outpouring of solidarity has been born, warming hearts gnawed by anguish and helplessness.

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Project “One_hour_walks”. First containment – 901m # 22 © Martin Boudier, Rennes.

For some, the confinement was also one of those ingredients that aroused artistic curiosity, once again showing how culture and creation are essential elements of our society. Rennes for 10 years, the photographer Martin Boudier followed the restriction measures of the two successive confinements to the letter. From these constraints, however, a different artistic practice was born. ” My freedom was born from these constraints – he confides. I remained exclusively in professional photography and commissioning, but confinement gave rise to desires and projects. »

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Martin Boudier

400 meters from the editorial staff of Universe lives this photographer, husband and father. A cat may have nine lives, but Martin Boudier also had several. Today he is a slasher. Make no mistake, we are not talking about the cinematic category of the horror film that appeared in the 70s, but simply about a person with several professions – much less bloody than a group of young people lost in the middle of the forest and tracked down by a psychopathic killer armed with a chainsaw or a knife, but the meeting therefore took place with peace of mind.

Self-taught professional photographer since 2006, he also organizes collaborative work sessions. During the confinement, he swapped his usual Canon 5D for his cell phone, an iPhone 10. Lighter and less bulky, these new electronic gadgets allow often remarkable photographic quality, not to mention the multiple retouching options to let go of creativity. “ When I started taking pictures of my outings, I didn’t have the idea of ​​making a series. The first were posted on April 13 on Instagram, a month after the start of containment », He specifies. He who had never used Instagram embarks on the photographic project ” One_hour_walks ».

Discover the photographs of the series ” One hour walks ” of Martin Boudier can be compared to a dive into the environment of Universe, the inspiring surroundings that surround the editorial staff as each one taps frantically on their keyboard, their brains in turmoil, in search of the perfect sentence in order to satisfy our beloved culture. readership. So how could we have missed such a project? The greatest detectives (or the undisputed fans of the first hour) may rise to the challenge of finding the location of the editorial office, within 400m. But play the game, looking at the address on the Internet will be considered pitiful cheating!

“1 kilometer – 1 hour” on @one_hour_walks

After the announcement of the first confinement, the ban on going out for more than an hour and within a perimeter of one kilometer around one’s home quickly followed. So little, but the news is still greeted as ” a breath », A breath of fresh air in the anxiety-provoking atmosphere of the moment. ” Usually when I take pictures, I always have the brief and the client’s needs in mind to fulfill the order. For once, I left with zero constraints, except that of confinement. »

The constraint of confinement was revealing for Martin: the opportunity for him to discover the joys of personal projects, of those for which we never find the time, and of more spontaneous photography, of that for which we give free rein to creativity, spontaneity. ” I stopped planning outings and planning a route. In meditation, we call it “being in the presence”. You live what happens and you don’t start to project. Martin allowed himself the freedom not to think, and in a society as fast as ours, what an arduous task!

In the continuity of the first confinement, the second was the subject of a new series which accompanies the evolution of the landscape, urban or natural, over the seasons: some graffiti have had time to disappear, the trees have been stripped creating a carpet of leaves in the twilight of their life and the reddish hues warm the light, bringing with them the mood of late summer and early fall nostalgia. To the 22 already existing walks, Martin adds nine in the colors of autumn and its shortened days. New paths were crossed with the same idea in mind: not to think, not to force yourself to take pictures.

You will recognize some places, others less. ” One Hour Walks »Is a real treasure hunt for the inhabitants of the city. The owl of War, the Jardin de la Confluence and the Mabilais rub shoulders with back doors, buildings invisible at first glance and graffiti artists still unknown. Perhaps the beginnings of the succession of the great who forged the street-art in Rennes and that Martin immortalized?

« the constraint (FROM CONTAINMENT) CAUSED A REGAIN OF creativity », Martin Boudier.

Photographing humans for 15 years, particularly in his work, he has notably produced a number of portraits of people from the world of gastronomy, ” but it can also be crafts, agriculture or other ». On the contrary, « series ” One Hour Walks » show very few people except me », He amuses himself to underline. But can’t we see the absence of human presence as a logical consequence of his work? Martin is certainly attached to the human, but is not the current situation a glimpse of the life of the man at this moment T? In a situation such as that experienced by the coronavirus pandemic, man loses all freedom and shines by his absence in the urban landscape.

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Project “One_hour_walks”. First containment – 857m # 12 © Martin Boudier, Rennes.

A third confinement is not on the agenda in Brittany for the moment, but let’s not rejoice too quickly. One confinement can hide another. Most of the time in your blind spot … he watches, wriggles with impatience and jumps on you when you least expect it! In the meantime, Unidivers can only advise you to go to the Instagram account of Martin Boudier in order to discover the entire series. As well as going to browse his new series “ Morphoses Where the work of the reflection of the trees is worthy of the greatest psychological tests of Rorschach. “ The branches of trees are like ramifications, a network that nature creates. Afterwards, I realized that this project had always been in me. Unidiverse prefers to silence the representations that cross the deliciously disturbed minds of editorial journalists, but you, dear readership, what do you see?

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Morphose #1775 © Martin Boudier, Rennes

Site Martin Boudier

Instagram Martin Boudier (Morphoses)

Instagram One_hour_walks

From March 1 to 31, 2021, the Musée de Bretagne is calling on professional photographers to collect the best photos of the confinement.

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