Paul Montagnon / Valse Triste

Snippets of daily life, irrelevant events which become important for us but we don’t really know why. Sunday occupations, lazy and uninterested, contradictory musings between an idyllic alpine countryside and a bucolic scene painted on the walls of a stinky tunnel. Gentle and frivolous peregrinations in search of a certain freedom. We try to escape our little Western comfort which has become a prison cemented by social life, dependencies, vain pleasures and discomforts. We try to extract a bit of romanticized solitude from the hustle and bustle, some radiant poetry amongst disenchantment to curb cynicism. Nature, in which we seek authenticity, solace and a major sensation of purity, sends us back to our contradictions and to this necessarily anthropized world, from which we cannot escape and in which our little attempts at rebellion remain suffocated. From these scattered images we draw malleable stories, trying to compose a coherent piece, seeking the right balance between little joys and their sad counterpoints.

Language: Italian, French, English
Size: 24 x 17 cm, 88 pages
Binding: hard
Publisher: SelfSelf books, 2025