Koudelka, 82, with a weathered face and blue forget-me-not eye, is a perpetual hermit in the middle of his sumptuous black and white panoramic formats, suspended like clouds in the vast exhibition hall of the National Library of France (BnF).
His exhibition is called “Ruins” and the tall typefaces of this elliptical title seem to fade on the cover of the catalog, like a dune or a wave under the breath of time.
Eternity and a day are promised to you in this contemplation which takes you on a journey, soothes you, and succeeds in rendering the immensity of the landscapes, the sacred void of the architectures and the detail of a sculpture erased on a stele.
She tracks the human trace, the man remaining the great absent from the image.
“I loved the desert, the burnt orchards, the withered shops, the lukewarm drinks.
I dragged myself through the stinking alleys and, with my eyes closed, I offered myself to the sun, god of fire ”
, wrote Rimbaud,
“ the man with the soles of wind ”,
in 1873.
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