INTERVIEW WITH CHRISTOPHE JACROT

Have you always aspired to be a photographer?

When I was 15, I was given a small analog camera. I very quickly set up a photo lab in a tiny cellar in the basement of my home and started taking lots of pictures around me. I wanted to get a good result, it was a strong personal desire. At 18, however, I gave up photography! My parents had signed me up for a photo safari in the Vanoise on the subject of ibexes. I couldn't relate to the image of the self-absorbed photographer that my roommate had conveyed to me and threw everything away. I actually rejected everything at the time.

You actually gave up everything at the age of 18?

Not quite, I started making short films instead. That's where you find the image again, but in motion. Then I made a feature film that was shown in several cinemas and on Canal Plus. But as I'm not a screenwriter and couldn't find anyone who wanted to write my second film, I changed direction. I became a real estate hunter, which was a new profession at the time.

Photo: Christophe Jacrot

When did photography find its way back into your life?

Photography knocked on my door when I was 45 years old. It grabbed me, but I felt the need to go back to school and did a 4-month training course in photojournalism. And then came an assignment. A tour guide was urgently looking for photographers to take 600 photos of Paris. Highly motivated, I started taking photos, but the spring was lousy and the tour guide told me that he absolutely wanted sunny photos. I complied, quite successfully in fact, because I sold him 400 pictures. For my part, however, I continued to photograph Paris in bad weather, somewhat out of a spirit of contradiction, and so I came up with the idea of inventing this rainy Parisian world. The idea led to a book the following year, which was published by a major French publisher.

What inspires you?

Come to think of it, since my trip to Shanghai, I've been using a strategy whose origins go back much further. I first browse the internet, bookshops or elsewhere and am drawn to photogenic places like a magnet. By photogenic, I mean emblematic places that are strongly visual and evocative and make something inside me resonate.

What's the next step once the location has been found?

The search for climatic coincidences! When it's raining heavily, the light is very special and very beautiful, but I think I'm the only one who sees it as everyone else is running for cover at that moment. So I'm on the hunt for bad weather, beautiful storms, blizzards, typhoons and rain squalls from all directions... but I don't overdo it either! I'm not interested in natural disasters, extremely violent hurricanes or tsunamis. Conversely, I'm not a big fan of light rain or drizzle either.

Is that sometimes risky?

Yes, there is a non-negligible risk, sometimes the expected weather event doesn't happen, and that's really frustrating! That happened to me in Boston. A storm was forecast and then nothing much happened. It moved further north. Fortunately, there are also really positive surprises.

Photo: Christophe Jacrot

Does N.Y. IN BLACK one of these surprises?

Yes, I was in New York at the end of 2012, just when the famous power outage after Hurricane Sandy happened. Total blackout in half of Manhattan! After dark, no traffic lights, no neon signs, no illuminated windows, no one on the street, it was an apocalyptic atmosphere, somewhere between the science fiction movie "N.Y. 1997" and a war zone. I quickly bought a tripod - I didn't have one with me, tripods aren't very practical in storms - and let myself be completely carried away by this apocalyptic mood. Some of the photos have often been compared to paintings by Edward Hopper. It is a coincidental analogy that certainly has its origins in the interplay between light and shadow. This series of pictures would later become the book N.Y. IN BLACK would later emerge from this series of pictures.

The image of a solitary photographer, a dark silhouette completely focused on his work, suits me well.

Where does this fascination with the rain come from?

To put it in the words of a famous painter: "I don't know how to explain my art, you'd have to ask my psyche."

This mysterious water that falls from the sky surprises me anew every time. I immerse myself in a wadded atmosphere, a closed shell with no real horizon, saturated with moisture, sometimes I move in a real soup. It is as if time stands still, a forced pause. It's also a tension, an imbalance, not rested, not calm, and visually strong.

You love the rain, the storms, the metropolises, but you can also be found in Iceland, in the snow ...

After Paris, Hong Kong, New York, Tokyo, I really felt the need for open landscapes, space and nature. And there was no way around Iceland, where one storm chases the next. And so I switched from rain to snow and started a new series of photos in cold countries. I discovered the white, the cold, the hostile nature. A world, frozen and icy... but not completely! There is always a spark of life, however tiny: Splashes of color, fleeting silhouettes, birds in flight, something poetic thawing in the beauty of this extreme climate. On the Faroe Islands, which belong to Denmark, the colorful houses and small churches seemed to simply smile away the climatic coincidences.

And then, one day, you seemed to have rediscovered France.

I settled in the Drôme at the foot of the Vercors and began to wander through the Aubrac, the Cantal department, the Cévennes... It's an environment of small mountains, more familiar, but also gloomy and less hospitable. How I love this region!

In the Vercors, I discovered spectacular roads, one of which has been forgotten and closed for 10 years because of its danger. A small barrier to overcome and you enter a grandiose world of rocks and deep gorges that seems straight out of a Tolkien novel. I am particularly looking for the novelistic dimension of a place.

Photo: Christophe Jacrot

Are there also unexpected experiences?

Yes, for example a Swiss hotel that is now closed, the Hotel Belvédère, which is wedged into a serpentine bend at an altitude of 2,200 meters. I discovered it on Instagram. I even watched videos of motorcyclists filming their rides with GoPros to understand the nature of the place before embarking on the journey myself.

As the road is closed in winter 18 km further down, I had a small window of opportunity to take photos at the start of winter when the first snowflakes fell. The 2nd time I traveled to this location in November, the road was already officially closed with a barrier, which I managed to open. Unfortunately for me, I bumped into the staff in charge and had to use all my arguments to get them to let me through. They allowed me an hour, which I kept to the minute. I was satisfied.

What difficulties do you face when taking photos in the rain or snow?

When it rains, especially during monsoon rains, the problem is the abrupt change in temperature and the resulting fogging... So in Asia, I turn off the air conditioning in the hotel early in the morning so that the camera reaches the temperature on the street. In winter, there is also a risk when I come in from the cold outside into a heated room.

And how do you take the "wet rain photos"?

You're probably talking about the rain photos I took through the windows of my car. Well, believe me, it's complicated. When you're cramped inside a small car, your options are limited and it's not easy to get the right distance to the subject. My dream is a bus with its huge windshield. It also has to be raining enough to depict the rain ideally: small or large drops? Should they drip down, run down or form smooth streaks? Using the windshield wipers is a real art!

So is a "climate photographer" a photographer like any other?

Yes, except that I'm very dependent on the weather. I often return to the same places several times for a good photo. I've been to Iceland eight times, for example. I like this way of working, it gives me orientation, my view changes, the pictures develop further. And I return to the place in question every time I'm not satisfied. For the red Icelandic house, I returned to the same place four times. In these cases, happiness is only a matter of time.

And do you have plans for the future?

I'd like to try out black and white photography, but I don't know what I'm going to do yet!