Poudrerie
Spacebar to pause
Arrow keys to navigate

Portraits in a City

A blink of the eyes is all one needs
to see the world differently.”

Daidō Moriyama

Portraits in a City is a photographic portrait of Montreal and its people. This collection of ready-made memories was gathered during countless wanderings in the heart of a fleeting city.

In the beginning, I thought of myself as a self-assigned photojournalist working for a yet to be defined magazine. But soon enough I realized that my images didn’t quite fit the topical journalistic canon: too subjective, they could only tell their own side of the story.

My camera likes to wander to the outskirts of the frame, drawn to people for whom the norm inspires very little if not a pressing urge to rewrite it. They are artists, rebels or heroes, fearless authors of their own world, tirelessly recasting themselves as the new protagonists in an ever-changing storyline.

These self-authored characters are our facilitators, acting as an interface between our inner self and the wider outside world. They are staged personas who, although firmly anchored in a tangible reality, are driven by the common narrative of our modern-day mythologies. The photographer, himself a myth-maker by trade, sees in this phenomenon an opening towards an endless field of investigation.

instagram.com/ricomichel

© 2024 Rico Michel – All rights reserved