PHOTOGRAPHY ZINES AND BOOKS NO: 66
Starlings of the Slipstream & Recontres sollicitudinaires by Quentin Guichard
Who?
Quentin Guichard is a Franco-American photographer based in Paris. Approaching his 30s, he has been shooting for around a decade switching to film upon receiving his father’s old film camera.
What?
Starlings of the Slipstream (published in 2022) and Rencontres sollicitudinaires (published in september 2024) are self published zines. The second is a direct sequel to the first in what will eventually be a trilogy. The series will serve as a personal history of a decade of photography 21-30 years old, mostly shot on a Leica M6.
Why?
I will use Guichard’s own words:
“Starlings of the slipstream emerged compulsively, responding to an inner dialogue and a desire to dissect my own anxieties and questionings. It was during an installation by Japanese artist Ryoji Ikeda at La Villette in Paris, that my obsessions and a certain aestheticism became recurrent.
This project consists of 25 photographs (taken between Paris and New York) retracing the last six months of my 21st birthday and the first six months of my 22nd, a period marked by a search for meaning (the transition from studies to professional life) and a certain distancing from others (and therefore from myself). This work is an attempt to reappropriate the visible and invisible through a personal prism, in which the human subject suggests more than it reveals.
My new publication, Rencontres sollicitudinaires, which will be self-published in September, is an extension of this work: it can be considered a direct sequel to the first. Taken for the most part in Italy (but also in France and India) when I was finishing my studies in Venice, this work relates the last six months of my 25th year and the first six of my 26th (still over a period of one year).
In my opinion, this series is more meditative and stems from a metaphysical questioning: how can we envisage existence through the prism of encounters (with others, with our environment, with a work of art, etc.)? In this respect, I’ve been influenced by the thoughts of French aesthetic philosopher Etienne Souriau, who reflected on different modes of existence, including what he called fictional beings. According to him, their existence is due to our solicitation: they will exist in us thanks to our imaginative solicitation, and will at the same time influence us in return in our everyday lives.
The encounter between the human subject and the fictional subject will therefore take place through the prism of the exchange that conditions the encounter. So I’ve tried to extend this idea by putting my intimate experience into dialogue with an aesthetic that places the human subject in absence-presence.”
Details.
Starlings of the Slipstream
1st edition numbered on 50 copies. Signed copy.
Details:
Perfect Bound
48 pages
25 pictures
300gsm Uncoated Cover
130gsm Uncoated pages
Recontres sollicitudinaires
1st edition numbered on 50 copies. Signed copy.
Details:
Perfect Bound
52 pages
29 pictures
300gsm Uncoated Cover
130gsm Silk pages
Where?
Both zines can be purchased directly from the photographer’s website here. They are priced at 20 and 15 Euro respectively. A third book set in a more traditional photo book format will round out this series wrapping up the photographer’s 20s.
P.S. Loved the Fernando Pessoa quotes throughout!
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Thanks to our guest for his submissions, it is a really cool thing to be able to share zines with you all. And remember, this is open to everyone. If you would like to have your zines or books featured then all you have to do is mail me. Hopefully there will be plenty more of you who want to get your books and zines out there to the world. Another installment will be coming soon.
Thanks,
JCH
