NICOLAS JORIOT – “I make black and white photos, rarely, unhurriedly, silently, to slow down the course of the world”

I wanted to include Nicolas Joriot in my blog because of his beautiful photos. I rang him up and suggested we meet. He agreed to come to my place for an interview. As we are not on the GPS, I explained that it might be difficult to find where we live but before I could say anything more, he interrupted me. “I never use a GPS. I hate them,” he said. “I often get lost but I always manage to find my way so don’t worry.” He did and he arrived on the dot of time! Nicolas Joriot is special and he clearly has his very own and appealing philosophy of life. Asked to define himself he calls himself, a journalist, a photographer and a writer but quickly adds I am not such a good journalist nor for that matter a proficient photographer. There is no false modesty in what he says. The truth of the matter is that he doesn’t want to be marked out by a particular activity and have to accept its limitations. As the purpose of this blog is to meet creative souls living in the Drôme, by the time Nicolas had told me about his life, it was clear that I had found one who had many strings to his bow.

Nicolas was born and grew up in Aix-en-Provence. From early on, he knew that his native city was not for him. The hustle and bustle of the crowded streets, the swarms of tourists, the harsh light of the Midi oppressed him and made him long for wide open, quiet and silent spaces in which he could feel well connected with nature, or cities and sites not yet overridden by the levelling effect of modern times.

How did he come to be what he is today? Did he study literature or had he been trained to be a photographer, or a journalist? The answer is, three times no. Is he an imaginative writer, an expressive photographer, an interesting journalist? The answer is three times yes. He is all these things and more for it is perhaps one of Nicolas’s characteristics to pop up where he is least expected. After his national service, he became a professional motorcyclist and for ten years he travelled and took part in national championships and international races. But he hastens to say that he is not a sportsman, as though he wants to avoid being classified, and that he doesn’t know much about mechanics but that is how it went. The same approach applies when he decided to build a house with his own hands. “In the beginning I was clumsy and hadn’t the faintest idea of how to go about it but I taught myself to be a mason, a carpenter, a roofer and an architect, and it somehow worked.” Having finished the building of his house, friends asked him to help them build a second one, which he did, and then he progressed to his next project. Travel is in Nicolas’s genes. For him it is an opening to the “other” world as well as the challenge of having to be face to face with himself with no landmarks to guide him. This by the way explains his dislike of the GPS! When he moves from one place to another, he always registers in writing what he sees and how he feels. He goes to great pains to take his photos, waiting patiently, sometimes hours at a time, for the right moment to shoot. He once waited for three hours at -25 C for two figures to cross paths on the right spot on a bridge. Some of these texts and photos serve as the basis for articles in magazines. It is not the facts and figures one finds in tourist brochures and in the standard travel literature that count for him but the atmosphere of the place, its on the spot reality and the customs of the people he comes across.

It was after meeting the photographer Anna Puig Rosado, who became Nicolas’s companion that he discovered how photos could be an excellent complement to his writings and a reliable means of capturing the fleeting moments of affinity with the surroundings he happens to be exploring. So, he became a photographer! He bought an old Leica camera – typical for Nicolas not to want a sophisticated digital one – only equipped with a 35mm lens. With it he has been taking black and white photos on 800 ASA films for the past 15 years. With Anna he has travelled all over the Middle East from Turkey to Yemen and all the way further down to the southern parts of India. On location they go out each morning on their own, gathering material during the day before meeting again in the evenings.

But Nicolas is also a solo traveller and his wanderings can take him a long way away from home. He has spent time in Chongqing in south eastern China on the confluence of two great rivers the Yangtze and the Jialing of which he poetically writes that “they are two great waterways who come together in a gentle embrace, something human beings have trouble doing.” He has also travelled northward up to the arctic regions, to Murmansk on the Barents Sea. Each time he brings back home a beautiful series of photos – some of them hauntingly evocative – and writings that convey how these faraway destinations have affected him.

Notwithstanding the manner in which Nicolas shies away from being taken for a writer, a photographer or a journalist and as everything he engages in is an act of creation, perhaps it would be more to the point to consider him as an artist of his own life?

They say that an image is worth a thousand words. The photos that follow by Nicolas speak for themselves.

CHINA