Les tubes de l’été 2022 et 2023 : e-books.

Les tubes de l’été 2022 et 2023, e-books with a title literally meaning summer hits, are books related to the long term field investigation work by Philip Boulay, director of Wor(l)ds…Cie., in a specific neighbourhood in the outskirts of Paris, Les Sept Arpents. Two tiles of an intense composition of a mosaic depicting a community through the collection of its members voices. I and Philip Boulay are building up a long term collaboration, not only based on my work as a photographer or as a designer, but also on the sharing of our own aesthetics, building up works going beyond the stage.

In the words of Philip Boulay: We all have a ‘refuge’ record, a song or a record we’ve played a hundred times on the turntable or in our earphones, linked to a special moment in our lives. Why not share them? We went out to meet residents of all generations – children, teenagers, mums and dads, sometimes grandparents – in the four corners of the town of Le Pré Saint-Gervais so that they could tell us about their ‘cuddly’ albums and let us hear them. All formats were explored: LPs, Compact Discs, streaming audio, etc. Why this attachment? How can we describe it? We’ve gathered these words, closely linked to the melodies and rhythms, to make up this Gervais play-lists for the summer. All the participants brought along their favourite album and shared their stories and memories, describing the circumstances of their lives that relate to it. These life stories, intimate and sonorous, are reproduced in these few pages. They are like postcards, snapshots in which we find the portrait of the inhabitant, small or large, wearing the cover of the record or his or her image, with his or her words opposite. Each of these stories is a little pearl of memory, life and pleasure. An invitation to share. At the end of the book, you’ll find a link to the playlist. Happy reading and musical discoveries!