Of Sicilian heritage, Jean-Marc Caracci was born in Tunisia and has been living in Montpellier, in the South of France, since he was one year old. A self-taught photographer, Jean-Marc Caracci has been inspired by Henri Cartier Bresson, Elliott Erwitt or Raymond Depardon and his latest project, ‘Homo Urbanus Europeanus’, is a proof of his fascination with the urban man. He has visited by now twenty five European capitals for his project, from Madrid, Sofia, Ljubljana, Zagreb, and Bucharest to Belgrade, Berlin, Vienna, Tirana or Paris. The remaining twenty two capitals represent his target in the next years, but nothing is possible without some financial help, which he would very much appreciate. You can visit his project portfolio (http://homo.urbanus.free.fr/portfolio/index.html), and hunt your city for an exhibition. Or, alternatively, you can purchase Jean-Marc Carracci’s exhibition catalogue at http://homo.urbanus.free.fr/europeanus/book.html.

The exposition opening of his tour was in Sofia (Bulgaria), in May 2009, in the frame of ‘Europe Day’, and exhibitions with the project have been presented in Lille (France) during the ‘Transphotographiques’ festival, in Tallinn (Estonia), in Warsaw and Szczecin (Poland). Jean-Marc is now preparing several exhibitions, including one for MORA Gallery in Bucharest (the 28^th of October 28 until the 19^th of November 2010) and he would appreciate any help in order to ship the framed photographs to Romania. For any suggestions, feel free to contact him at jean-marc.caracci@laposte.net.

Dear Jean-Marc, let’s be British for a while, and let’s talk a bit about the weather. When you were shooting in Bucharest, in May 2009, you wrote me: ‘just to let you know that it has been very difficult to work in Bucharest’. Having read this part of the e-mail, my heart trembled, I thought of so many things you could have disliked whilst being in Romania. But you continued: ‘...because of so many cloudy and rainy days’. I was honestly very amused. I would have thought that others were the reasons that could have made your shooting session in Bucharest problematic, and the weather was not one of them. The weather is more of an issue in the UK where having all seasons in just one day could be a real problem for a photographer. How was the weather like in the cities that you visited in the last 2 years for your project, ‘Homo Urbanus Europeanus’, which is under review in this interview?

Staying for only one week in each capital where I hunt ‘Homo Urbanus Europeanus’, as I lack time and money for a longer stay, it happened a few times indeed that the weather conditions were not the best for shooting. Photographing a large urban set, with one character inside, a kind of human silhouette, I need light and shadows, if I want to create a good atmosphere and composition. So, if the sun is missing most of the time and I am in a city for a shooting session, I cannot do anything good… I have only tears for crying.

Well, let’s not cry too much. A sunny world, without rain or snow, has no fun. Besides, your photographs are known across Europe, your project links spaces and nationalities. How have you started this project about the European urban man?

I take photos since I was 15 and I started to exhibit them when I was twenty, as an amateur. I had a ‘proper’ job, not connected with photography or art - let’s say it was an ‘alimentary’ job, the kind of job you do exclusively to have a salary and pay the bills - and photography was just a way of having fun and expressing myself. In 2006, I lost this job, and during the first months I tried in vain to find a new one, but it is difficult to find a job when you are forty eight years old, you have no diplomas, or just one, in Photo Laboratory. I said OK; let’s try to do my best in photography. Photography became my full time occupation and so it began the biggest adventure of my life. As I started almost from scratch, I needed to find an idea which could have made me internationally known. Obviously, it was necessary to cross the French borders, as ‘nobody is prophet in his own country’, and to develop a project that could have been of some interest and could have been shown in other countries. The idea of shooting Europe was born.

 Europe is a large place and its capitals quite large villages. How do you choose the locations in a city? Do you research before landing?

I don’t do any kind of research before landing in the capital. If I do, I find out only about the famous monuments, people or places. But I don’t care about them. I am interested in the people of the city, not in the tourists in front of a cathedral or the Eiffel Tower. My job is walking… until I find the right place. The images of HUE project, whether from Bucharest, Tallinn or Brussels, are characterized by their ‘Europeanity’. National and cultural particularities are excluded, as much as possible, from my sphere of activity. So, looking at the images of the project, nobody can recognize any country or city, except the inhabitants themselves. But everybody can recognize Europe in all of them. This is actually an important part of the philosophy of this project. I would like to think I am working for Europe. I try to unite the European Men by art, regardless of their nationalities. It is like saying: ‘Look, we are more alike than different... let’s make Europe more and more united and jointly liable, from Iceland to Turkey.’
But aren’t we different?

European men are… European. Clothes, cars, advertisings, and way of life, whether you live in Latvia or in Austria, are similar. The only thing which still makes us different is our language, and, less important, the food, or, more generally, the ‘Art de la Table’, the way we enjoy eating and drinking.

Let’s return to your European urban man. Where from this need to focus your camera on the man in the city? Why not, for instance, follow the man in the country side or on the sea or out in the space?

There are only practical and financial reasons, as you can imagine. It is easier and, not to mention, cheaper, to land in a capital airport, to do my job in the city for a week and then to pack my camera and leave. Then, as I have to save money as much as possible, I need to be hosted for free in all the places where I shoot. And, believe me, if I managed, although not easily, to find hosts in all the cities that I have visited for the project, I am sure it would have been very difficult, or maybe impossible, to find hosts in small villages.

On the other hand, the main target of my photographic research has always been the Man, the urban part of the human being… let’s say the ‘urban being’. Now that I have gained a lot of experience in the last years, I don’t waste time when I arrive in a new capital. I organize myself with maps and urban transportation and then I start doing my job: walking, walking and walking, until I find the perfect place. Then I wait for the right moment. This means waiting for the right silhouette, in the right place in the frame.

 So waiting for the proper European... who is constantly moving; it seems he is walking with a precise purpose, towards a precise destination, from point A to point B. Is the modern European man a hurried one?

Of course he is, as any other American, Chinese or Australian ‘urban beings’. What are we doing in our own city!? We go from home to the office, from office to a restaurant, from restaurant to a professional meeting; then we walk from our office to our home, from home to cinema, and from there to a pub. I mean, when we are in our own city, we usually never stroll. We go from A to B, almost with closed eyes. The city belongs to us, we are in our place, and we like it.

You photograph the man dwelling in the great cities of Europe, but also the city he inhabits. Both the man and the city are equally important within your frame, as if they cannot be one without the other. Is the modern European man so urbanized?

Yes, he is, and he will be more and more. There are still a few capitals which seem to have no urbanism politics, like Helsinki, Rome, Madrid or Bucharest as well. All these cities, for different reasons, keep their old and historical monuments and squares, and no modern architecture or urbanism are built and planned for the pleasure of the inhabitants. In Rome, for example, it has been impossible to shoot in some ‘European places’, but only in ‘Roman places’.

 Charles Baudelaire and Walter Benjamin have introduced us the flâneur, the stroller on the streets of the city, who walks aimlessly, detached, but aesthetically involved in the spectacle of the world. It seems that the European men lost this involvement with the aesthetics of everyday life. But you haven’t lost the ability or maybe the need to observe the world around. Susan Sontag observed that the photographer is a flâneur with a camera and the camera is his preferred tool. Looking at your photographs I felt like you were hunting these people.

Well, you are right; I am a kind of hunter when I shoot in a city, and especially with the HUE project. Look at my photographs and remove the character: the image has no sense anymore. My job is to capture an ‘urban being’, to ‘seize’ him or her in the right place, at the right moment. I find the place and if the light is good, I just calculate the exact spot where I am going to put my feet and wait for the man or woman to pass by. I can wait from ten minutes to an hour or maybe longer, and I am willing to come again, each day, in the same place, to try to capture the best possible image. Of course, sometimes, as a hunter who comes back home without any game, it happens I don’t manage to shoot the right silhouette at the right moment. And, believe me, when you have found a very interesting place, but you are not visited by the right person to populate it, it becomes frustrating. But it is part of the game.

Your European man is almost always framed alone. And his loneliness is hunting. Is the man really alone or you are hunting him in his solitude? Does the city enhance this loneliness?

You know, I started the HUE project in June 2007, in Bratislava. At that time, I didn’t know exactly the style I wanted to give to my images. I just knew that I wanted to work on the Man into his urban environment. Step by step, after three or four capitals, the project started having its own shape and distinctive features: lonely characters isolated into their natural habitat. It doesn’t mean that I wanted to show the loneliness in the city… or, at least, not the sad and alienating part of it. Capturing people alone in the city is actually for me the best way to show the ‘urban being’. I also think loneliness is part of the aesthetics of life. ‘Homo Urbanus Europeanus’ project expresses, in my mind, a kind of happiness to stay in the city. These lonely people look like kings of the streets. Standing or walking with pride, the city seems to belong to them. It is both interesting and pleasant to photograph people like that, totally isolated out of the urban crowd. I consider them like characters of cinema who don’t know they are playing a role, directed into their natural set without their knowledge. 

The set intimidates. The omnipresent walls and the huge shapes of the modern city convey a sense of smallness and oppression.

All of us, city inhabitants, we are living, moving, walking in a city, but we never stop, and we never look up or look around. So we don’t see the aesthetics of the places we are passing by every day. I just wanted to show this kind of beauty; to put a man, you and me, into an urban set, and say: ‘Have you ever imagined that another person, a gazer, can see you like this, as a character who gives sense to the architecture and the world around?’

What projects are on your agenda?

Nothing new on my agenda right now. This year I want to shoot other European capitals still missing from my project: Amsterdam, Athens, Copenhagen, Dublin, Valletta, London, Luxembourg, and Nicosia. Unfortunately, a very interesting contract with the European Commission Representation in Lebanon failed, because these eight capitals were missing. So I will add them. And then, after shooting twenty five European capitals in the last two years, I need to earn some money from this huge work. This year I will try to sell my exhibition to European organisations, local communities or places like airports and shopping malls. There are already scheduled some ‘official’ exhibitions for 2010. I am also looking for a publisher who would like to make a book with my HUE images, a book that could be sold in the entire Europe.