ALAIN TROUILLY

Can you tell us about yourself and your learning path in photography?

I came to photography thanks to the camera my father gave me for my high school graduation and to the photo lab of my engineering school. After the first sheet of Ilford paper, exposed on the wrong side under the enlarger, I learned by myself, and the virus never left me. After a move, my film lab finding no more space, I converted to digital with much reluctance. Still, I do not regret this choice which gives me more freedom and guarantees reproducibility. My natural mode of expression remains black and white. My job left me little time available. As a result, photography remained a dormant passion awakened during family celebrations and vacations for a long time. Today, I cannot have a professional activity anymore. As a result, I can address more fundamental questions about my photography, what I want to do with it, and what I want to say by showing images.

What kind of images were you looking at when you started?

My references at the time were in the Photo magazine that I bought when I could. Jeanloup Sieff for Death Valley, for his skies, for the women he made so beautiful, for his aestheticism, for his wordplay. I always reread with the same pleasure his books that I could buy later. He left while I was undergoing a major operation. When my wife told me, when I woke up, it made me sad, as if a bit of my youth had disappeared with him. And then the humanist photographers Cartier-Bresson, Doisneau, Willy Ronis, and others who gave me a taste for snapshots taught me to observe and frame quickly. So I think that deep down, I am nostalgic for that time when it was easier to photograph life and its citizens.

I also remember Jean-Claude Gautrand's reportage on the assassination of Baltard, which struck me a lot. I had the opportunity to meet him at an exhibition a few years ago. He seemed surprised that I had retained the memory of his images.

What are your main influences in painting and photography?

I don't remember how I discovered Gilbert Garcin. This gentleman wrapped in an old coat and wearing a hat devoted himself to photography at 60. He invented a style that didn't exist, a theater in which he stages himself with his wife and whose images travel the world. His view of life is full of humor, and the pages of his books are as many lessons in philosophy. I had the chance to visit the exhibition dedicated to him in Arles; he is someone I would have liked to meet. My Migrant series owes him a lot.

A friend introduced me to Ralph Gibson at a workshop he was giving. I like his pure black and white style, dark, contrasting, punctuated by light. By turning the pages of his books, I understood the interest in sacrificing the non-essential zones of an image to bring the eye towards those the photographer chose to illuminate.

How would you define your style?

My style? I don't know if I have a style because I see myself as a DIY photographer, a "false photographer," as Sieff used to say. I have no real experience with photography, which has not been my profession. It has been and remains a hobby. However, I am almost 70 years old today, I have things to say and to show, and photography is, in a way, my pen to write it with images. If I had to define in a