Paul Nadar, Payram Dialogue photographique sur la route de la soie

“In 1890 Paul Nadar undertook a journey to Central Asia along the Silk Road. He brought back an impressive series of photographs of Soviet modernity in progress, taken with the first Kodak gelatin films.
A century later, Payram took the same route.
Using the latest large-format Kodak film, he captures the everyday life of the former USSR countries as they reclaim their history.

This book puts their images in dialogue by questioning the place of photography in the field of memory and its capacity to grasp history. The originality of its form – two superimposed books assembled and bound – adds an additional echo to these two ambitious narratives analysed by the historian of photography Michel Poivert.”