The anecdote is told by the writer Pierre Adrian and the journalist Philibert Humm, in the epilogue of the photography book. Rades (Hoëbeke Collection, Gallimard, 2023). Even if slightly distorted, it is made to be repeated. One day, at the PTT bar in Lourdes, Monique, with forty years of service, saw Guillaume Blot, a young photographer who, that day, did not take any photos, arrive at her counter. They talked for a good hour and, as night fell, this customer, not very similar to the others, asked if he could sleep there. The boss would simply have replied: “You will slam the door when you leave.” It was the only time Blot unrolled his sleeping bag and settled down on the floor, with the unique smell of old bars, among the deserted seats. Even when he started a series about roadside restaurants this summer, he slept in his van, in parking lots.
It was in 2015 that the Nantes resident launched herself into documentary photography, at the age of 26, with a first series called “Buvettes”. She then worked as a columnist for the dutch guide meal and finds it lacking in snack reviews. So he sets out on his tour of France visiting chip shops in stadiums, mainly football stadiums. Photos, texts, kilometres on the clock, this first project kept him busy for four years. In 2019, as a regular visitor to cafés, he realised how much he loved the scenes of life taking place there and the improbable stories of the people he met. He then began a series of photographs entitled “Rades”. “My idea was to document a France of bistros, taking into account the erosion of the number of cafés in the country. I don’t have post-Covid figures, but we have gone from two hundred thousand IV licences to about forty thousand in sixty years. It will be very interesting to see the evolution, even in terms of photography, in the coming years.”
A cat wandering around, dogs on a leash, a parrot, scratch cards, a white guy at the counter, more or less funny jokes, pints, a cup of coffee that empties quickly, lost glances, laughter, cigarettes, people from the neighbourhood, people passing through, very old people who don’t look their age, young people who look older… What characterises a place? “Its authenticity, Guillaume Blot answers. And it is only instilled by the soul of the patrons, the owners and the regular customers. It takes time. Those who want it are not bad. It is not enough to have a vintage decoration or a Ricard decanter. »
You have 50.6% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.
