“From what our eyes see when we walk in streets, anywhere in the world, under and around our feet, on pavements covered with the remnants of paint and chewing gum, wet spots and tyre tracks, I have created photographs and photographic compositions that allude to the world of Atlases, to the pages filled with images of the universe, geographical maps, landscapes, invitations to discover the world and to invent other worlds”.
(A partir de ce qui tombe sous nos yeux quand on marche dans les rues du monde, là autour de nos pas comme dessous, sur les trottoirs couverts de restes de peinture et de cheving-gum aplatis, de taches d’humidité et d’autres traces de pneu, râpées, j’ai réalisé des photographies et des compositions photographiques faisant allusion au monde des Atlas, aux pages remplies d’images de l’univers, de cartes de géographie, de paysages, d’invitations à découvrir comme à inventer le monde, un monde).
As the artist, Alan Humerose (1956) himself, says, the photographs that make up The Great Atlas of Downcast Eyes (Le Grand Atlas des yeux baissés) are nothing more than an invitation. An invitation to explore, change viewpoints, and imagine a different reality, but also and above all to dream.
To walk the pavements as if leafing through an atlas, to get lost in their roughness, to be intoxicated by their colours and to use these unexpected discoveries to form a new poetic and photographic universe, that is what The Great Atlas of Downcast Eyes is about.
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