“Voyages” by Raymond Depardon is one of the very few books I bought 6 times. Once to put it on my book shelves, and once again after I lost it during a move. I gave three books to friends. And one small paperback issue, always at the bottom of my backpack, scratched, pages turned downed, folded, which shared my wanderings for three years. It went to Africa, to the desert, to the coldness of Berlin in January. It also followed my commuting “voyages”.

This is a kind of journey that Depardon forgot on his list. Anyway.... it's certainly one of the most common in our places, whether it be people spending three hours a day in common transportation, whether it be people regularly between two planes, two trains, woken up too early, too late in bed, seeing from the places they pass by on a train station, an office and a hotel ? The weekend is too short to be really at home, and takes back one’s place in one's life, luggage must be emptied, some shopping, some washing, at least a good sleep, a few hours for the family, and to pack again. With such a life, one looses their friends.... And during the week, retreated in a hotel room too standardised to be homely, the traveller closes himself between a TV set and a laptop, the very same he will find again the day after in the office. From screen to screen.... it is a false wandering, a kilometres-eater that shows nothing from the world passed by.

Depardon also starts his list with a “false wandering”, according to him, Africa and the desert. I start to write this text tonight, before flying to Sahara. He is right, desert is no wandering, but it’s a way to the centre, to the self. There are no cut-across nor bends in the desert's passes, just an imaginary straight way towards the essential in the middle of this huge Nothing... Large Nothing, Great Emptiness, that's what Namib means and what Rub'Al Kali means. Moreover, the desert is also a vital and urgent search, the one for the next well. Every man that crosses the desert has an essential goal, which prevents him from wandering: to find water and escape this deadly void.

Later the “ordered wandering” comes. That was partially mine, there again take a plane, a train, and go somewhere to do something, mind wandering, in the vacuity of an airport's waiting room. What is my goal when I commute? Certainly not to go there, because I already know I will come back, go there again and again come back....

The “forced wandering” is the first wandering. Exodus, the one of those that has no other choice than to find an acceptable place – i.e. a place where they will be accepted – or die. These wanderings I wanted to tell before it is too late and the traces are gone.

The photographs in “Voyages” left their mark on me, totally separated from the text, as a conversation with a friend, without anything to see with the landscape you can see out of the train's window.

I was quickly tired with the game “But where is it?”, photos without a title or a comment, gradually accepting this idea of Depardon that the world looks alike, exchangeable landscapes.

(c) Raymond Depardon

Of course, some pictures remind me of some small American cities, but after all they could be in some countries in Eastern Europe. Of course, some pictures remind me of Africa, but they could be at the border of the Tar desert, or in the States.... wherever the grass does not grow. And then a picture stops me, with a very strange and elusive feeling of familiarity.

First of all, a word in French, or in English, well, in a language where “National” is normally written.... with a “t”, not a “z” or a “c”... It's a sign, maybe of a bank, and cut exactly at the beginning of the word. It's impossible to know what was written before, a wonderful framing, apparently and deceivingly trivial. It's a long street bordered with arcades on both sides. The cobbles, modern and perfectly regular are glowing under the rain. The road is at the level of the sidewalk separated only by large grates. The arcades are made with quadrangular smooth pillars, made of stone, maybe marble. Then they transform into rich-looking buildings, with a second floor higher than the others, and the last floor retreats, with a guardrail that lets one guess a large balcony, maybe even a patio. What troubles me is that all these elements are so familiar, and nevertheless I'm sure I never saw this very specific mix.

I saw so many of these buildings, would it be in the rich boroughs of Paris, XVI° arrondissement, of the King's Avenue in Versailles. Usually, their facades also have balconies, when here, they are flat. Apart from a grille that could be an emergency staircase on one of the buildings, on a side street.

The arcades could also be in Paris, or may be more in Le Havre, because the stone is too smooth, and the stones join too tight for them to be in Rue de Rivoli. Have I already seen this alternation of round and square pillars? In England maybe, but for England also, the cobbles are out of place. The ventilation grates, very long and large are so common, I walked on them so many times, on modern commercial places, La Défense, New York, Lille, each time cursing because of the risk of breaking a high heel.

But this very special mix, marble pillars and long grates, seems unique to me. I look again at the photo, a little bit further on the left there are posters, too small to be deciphered. Remains the cobbles, this so common and typical stuff, small grey stones in Paris, and long rectangle slates on the Pont-Neuf, small dark grey rhombs at the entrance of Central Park (The same ones of friend of New-York, David, once instantly recognized on another picture, without any other landmark, small cubes of grey or dark red concrete of the German pavements, huge stones raised in chaos and melted tarmac, out of which small geysers of steam fuse, in summer in Manhattan, regular octogones of broken sidewalks in Marrakech.... each city has, on top of the set up of its sidewalks, colour and wear of its tarmac, arrangement of street plates, number and size of its bins, a special atmosphere, a flair that makes as much of its personality as do its most beautiful monuments.

I come back to these cobbles, flat, glowing under the rain, with their slightly irregular surface. The road is nearly even with the sidewalk, we are not in France. In spite of a shield that could be of a bus stop, where the pedestrians cross the street. But this familiar city is not Paris, of that I'm sure.

And suddenly, as I scrutinize for the 10th time the picture, looking for hints, I finally notice this church tower that ends my search. A light colour, with darker lines, a roof that forms a tulip bulb, on the left a second bulb, just above the roofs slant, we are in South Germany, with one of this church like thousands others, the roughcast the colour of fresh butter, slates or green tiles roofs. Maybe even Munich, and that would be the Frauenkirche.

Four pages later, it's just the contrary. In a flash, I know it is Germany. But I have to look for the elements which make me so positive.

It can't be the van of the seventies, it was seen everywhere in Europe, a good old rounded Westphalia. It can't be the small cobbles in the foreground. Cars' plates are too small to be read. The mood is sad, a rainy, European winter. Everything is trivial. The advertisement for a newspaper on a bus-stop, “Le Monde”, “The Times” or any other, the pedestrian leaving is already no more than a confused silhouette. Buildings bars so straight, so rectangular and without any individuality, these you find in all suburbs, in all small industrial cities.

So what?

Lost in the picture, on the right, is a very tiny sign « S » that my eyes already passed ten times without seeing it, « S » for « Strassenbahn », the German underground.

And if it's Germany, then, again thanks to the cobbles, I'm sure it's in Berlin, because these are the cobbles that draw through the city the former place of the Wall.

Some photos are easier to locate, for example the ones with sings in ideograms. Is it really so easy? Japanese or Chinese? China or Chinatown somewhere in the western world? Some lights, on others, are “African”, burning sun, light sky, light like a cutting crystal, hard shadows and blinding contrasts... Some suburbs are American, whether a small city of the Middle West, or in the Deep South. Or even somewhere in Mexico... or anywhere else, in any Third World not so poor anymore, but not yet developed. And the fact the signs are in English does not prove anything, there are « hamburgers » all around the world. It just tells us we are in a country that uses the occidental alphabet.

(c) Raymnod Depardon

(c) Raymond Depardon

After the pictures in Germany come the pictures in France, in Parisian suburbs. There, I'm at home, able to spot the details that enable me to locate, with more and more precision, the sign of the supermarket, “Régie Autonome des Transports Parisiens” bus-stops, the phone zone area in 01, the form of the bins, aligned in front of wall made of millstone and roughcast... and somewhere, a sign for the clinic in Athis. The game is over. It is Parisian suburbs, in Athis-Mons.

But for another person, who would not have lived in Paris, these pictures would tell no more than the ones before.

Some pages later, the picture of a lounge in a hotel, some old-fashioned armchairs, in which the comfort might be questionable, aligned against a blank wall with a mirror without a frame, as sole decoration.

I saw that already, in Solitaire in Namibia, as well as in Berlin. This room could actually be anywhere in the world, even in London, maybe even in Paris, whose hotels I don't know, as I lived there for nearly forty years. But mainly, for me at least, in Namibia, and oddly, this dark and narrox photo brings to my mind large landscapes and the blinding light of other deserts. We stopped for a quick lunch, disturbing a yellow dog that was sleeping on one of those armchairs. His master served us something, some meat and a few fruits, I think. And we stayed inside, in the half-light and smell of faded things, to protect ourselves of the strength of the midday-sun.

Still browsing through this book, I finally believe I'm in the desert, the very place of no wandering. As in the desert, all places look alike, and nevertheless differ slightly. As in the desert, to go farer away gives only the satisfaction of the move, because it is, farer and farer away, the same landscape.

But I am going to follow Depardon's advice “One has to go, quickly. Not to wait for the end of his life [...] To better leave again, to better know oneself. And to please oneself.”  And moose myself on the endless road of the last photo, this finger pointing towards somewhere else and someone else, just over the horizon.

(c) Raymond Depardon