This project explores different sides of the human processes that are at the coreof photography as a practice and an experience. 

It dwells on the role of the spectactor as being the subject to the production of meaning. 

The first part – A short Indian film roll – explores narrative photography and the connections that the viewer voluntarily or involuntarily establishes between the images they are presented with, especially when these are the sort of I like, images that do not tell everything at once, images that even combine to bring some unease, or allow some space to think. Spoon-feeding is so boring. For once, I have tried to organise the sequence of photos by association, and not by classification. This was quite a challenge since the Cartesian obsession with rational organisation proper to any French person has been deeply ingrained in me by the dry training of a bureaucrat used to cutting problems into pieces and assembling them so that they can be solved. But there it is!

The second part- Seeing you, seeing me- is devoted to the multiple interactionsthat occur between the photographer and the subject when a photograph is taken. In this series of portraits taken randomly across India during chance encounters, the sitters are looking straight at the photographer. Some look defiant but most are surprised and curious since I never ask my subjects to sit nor stage a photo: a connection has thus been established between us.

Emmanuel Lenain