How to Keep the Memory of Travelling

-Thoughts from Visages&Villages

When we travel across different places, what appear to be the most important? The scenery, the food, the culture or the human? When we go through one trip and another, what will be the most beautiful way to keep those stories? On the road, I have always been asking myself these questions. And this time, for Varda and JR, an 88-year-old woman director and a 33-year-old artist and director, they have provided their own answer. The answer is Visage&Village, the relation between the human and the land.

That’s how they come up with a not totally new but still interesting idea-to travel in a camera truck(a truck looks like a camera, could also print out grand pictures actually) in different villages. They captured the faces of the local people that represents a typical story in the village and paste them on the walls. That’s how they make a memory of the places.

Face feature and the grand paintings on the wall are not something new, but when they are combined with each other, we could still see people touched by those grand faces. This is the warmth and miracle of this project. In this documentary, we see how they begin the creation: getting familiar with a village, knowing its story, selecting places for photo pasting, investigating the geography feature of the land for a better position, picking up ideas of the photos and then getting engaged the people to finish the photograph, finally printing them out and pasting them on the walls.

Simple methods could produce great work, distinct artwork could somehow conclude the thoughts of lands and the life. Sometimes the works in certain village are thought-provoking: it’s memorable that on a beach of Normandie, they printed a photo of a sitting people on a leaning abandoned military bunkers by the sea. The next morning, they returned to find that the picture was faded by the flood tide of the sea. That’s when Varda said, “the sea has its own reason to do that, so as the wind and the sand. All will disappear, so as us.” When Vadar was sitting with JR in front of the sea, surrounded by a great range of sands, she said this out, calmly and peacefully. Her old but firm voice at that time as if drags people to reflect the whole life of human-being and to accept the come-and-go of everything.

When they reached an abandoned village, they called back all the people. At that day, people nearby gathered in this old village that was once crowded, having a normal daily life, as if holding a pleasant photo-taking party. After all these human faces are printed on the wall of those old houses, the village become alive again. It’s human that makes a land memorable.

“Every face has its own story.” That’s a key founding in the project as well. After they took pictures of the workers in a industry salt production factory, they found out there happened to be one worker who was facing the final day of his work. Facing towards the retirement for the first time, he seemed to be a bit nervous and also helpless, not knowing what could be done next, unlike the excitement that we have once imagined for the retirement. From another outdoor face-gallery, they got the chance to know one man not really have a job during his entire life. However, he’s not at all poor, he collects the bottle caps as an art and has a profound thoughts on his own life, “Mother of moon gives me the coolness, father of sun offers me the warmth, universe gives me a place to live. How grand the space I have owned.” Listening to the voice of people, amazing stories are dug out.

The moving moments not only appear from those villages and faces, but also the travel between Varda and JR. They didn’t meet before early but have always memory and admiration for each other’s work. An 88-year-old woman and a 33-year-old man breaks the gaps of the ages and begin to create and dream together. Varda, as old as she is, sometimes say things to bring JR into silence and thoughts, to cooperate for the “game” of JR, but still, she’s like a child, sitting on a wheelchair to fast travel through different artworks in the gallery, to stubbornly ask JR to take off his sun glasses... What is touching is that after each split project in a village, they would sit under a tree, in front of the lake, facing the sea, etc. to talk and share one after the other. Those voices are like the voiceover of the documentary and at the same time make people immerse in the conversation of JR and Varda when they truly connect with each other. The most moving moment will be when JR photographed the eyes and feet of Varda and printed them on a train. “The place that you cannot go, they will help you to visit.” Until then, the memory of voyage is kept with an open way and the meaning of going on the road has been expressed.

This peaceful and literary documentary has taught me a lot. On one hand, it inspires people to make use of the most common subjects with different forms and sizes to create something new. Art is about trying out and mixing up. On the other hand its way to film the documentaries is like the diary of the voyage but also a speak-up of their mind. Without the stunning and special effects, the simple way to tell a story still touches people’s heart. Finally, it conveys the connection of human and those villages: “a village is alive because of those faces, and each faces have their own story to tell.”

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Pictures from: Douban