This particular story is not about beauty itself. It’s a bout what we see, or what we believe we see.
In the beginning, all soda cans are identical in shape; we just see them as cans, with the purpose of containing liquids we want to spill down our throats. When they get empty, they loose their purpose so we thrown them, in the bin, or in the street.
To make this photo shoot happen, I had to have a different attitude regarding my daily paths. I had to look down and pay attention to the side of the road to find these cans; I had to operate a change in the way I looked at the streets, and it was very interesting realizing that if you change your perspective you are able to find love and beauty wherever you’d like.
These bits of aluminum were all crushed under cars, and they all have their own story. Look carefully and you will notice that they are all different. This is exactly how I feel about humans today : we are all the same, but we are unable to see or accept the differences. We only see what’s in front of us, we only hear what we want to hear; it has become very difficult to be an individual character. People just want to be like the movie stars they admire. They want to look like their references, instead of finding their own personal legend. It is surely easier and reassuring to be like the neighbor. By wanting to look like others, they just want to remain invisible. They want to be seen as acceptable, but really what they want is to be accepted. They try to belong to a group or a society, and they believe that originality comes from outer style. But it doesn’t; being a true original comes from inside the heart and soul. The outer appearance is just a shell.
The purpose of this work is not esthetic, it’s philosophical. If you are able to recognize the individuality of all these cans, you understand their individual story. They were all crushed, and they all ended up on the tar, but still they remain unique.
We all come from the same place, and we’ll end the same way, six feet under. We are all crushed by life experiences. But are we able to look beyond, and recognize our luck in the universe, as being an individual mind with its own choices ?
I sincerely hope that you understand my words as much as the photographic idea of reproducing an image several times in order to demonstrate the similarity and difference between them.
bref, je faisais un barrouf tu tonnerre et surtout, en décélération, le pot produisait des explosions.
