TWENTYSIX ABANDONED GASOLINE STATIONS

Twenty-six abandoned gas stations (twenty-six photographs in a case): a project on the theme of the road, non-architecture and wandering, referring to Ed Ruscha’s seminal artist’s book (1963) and testifying as much to the mutations of the suburban landscape as to the fantasy of the aftermath of a hypothetical disaster.

Sequel and possible counter-field to Alphabet Truck, TWENTYSIX ABANDONED GASOLINE STATIONS takes the pretext of Ruscha’s book, TWENTYSIX GASOLINE STATIONS, to treat, in the form of a typology of abandoned service stations, the connections and oppositions between objective and romantic approaches in photographic practice.

Between objectivity and fiction, the twenty-six abandoned service stations—taken exclusively in the extended Île-de-France region—testify as much to the mutations of the suburban landscape under the effects of the concentration of road networks as to the fantasy of the aftermath of a hypothetical disaster of which they would be one of the most significant manifestations.

Thus, by taking the form of a methodical archiving of the ruins of our near past in their most common dimension, the apparent neutrality of TAGS, by describing a universe reduced to abandonment, finally resembles more one of these stories of anticipation which haunt the American B series and whose narrator, in this desolate road movie, would make figure of survivor.

Working as always on the photographic territory of the geographical as well as temporal in-between, TAGS participate in the same dialectical ambiguities as the subject they deal with.