“I have followed them since the beginning”: Franck Brudieux, anonymous ambassador and enthusiast of La Machine

On October 25, 26 and 27, more than 1,200,000 people marched alongside the Machines, in the streets of Toulouse, during the second opus of “Gardien du Temple, La porte des Ténèbres”, created by François Delaroziere. In this crowd of anonymous people, there was Franck Brudieux. Camera slung over his shoulder, this neo-Toulouse resident spent long hours waiting for Lilith, the Scorpio woman, to wake up; of Asterion, the Minotaur or Ariadne, the Spider.

Of these three days of extraordinary show, this La Machine enthusiast, formerly from Nantes (city where the company has a workshop) savored every moment. With his old digital Nikon D200, he took superb black and white photos. “I do overprinting. In other words, I have fun photographing the sky or other elements in addition to the event and I superimpose the two. I don’t do that on Photoshop afterwards, but on the moment to benefit from chance in my images”, announces Franck Brudieux. This gives an Asterion crossed by clouds, a Lilith on the Pont Neuf transported by a tormented sky or pierced by a landscape of trees and crowds…

Having lived in Nantes for 10 years, from 1992 to 2002, Franck Brudieux attended the first street shows. “At the time, it was Royal de Luxe, I followed them almost from the start.” Moreover, Franck had photographed giant giraffes as an amateur for “Pil L’Hebdo”, a Nantes magazine. “At the time of the Giants, there were a whole series of Lilliputians who manipulated them. It was much less automated than today. I also remember that they fed the giraffes, which we don’t find with the Minotaur, who is considered a God and does not need to be fed,” he laughs.

“Same starting spirit”

Franck is delighted that the La Machine company has preserved “this initial spirit. What was happening in Nantes can be found today in Toulouse, where the show mobilizes the entire city, in the greatest secrecy. Apart from the major strikes, it’s the only moment when all the generations come together to create cohesion,” notes the photographer. And to continue: “I like the fact that there is no merchandising, nor ostentatious security which would destroy the poetry of the show”.

During the three days of the last urban opera, Franck felt “a great symbiosis between the people. During the long waiting times, we talk to each other. Even if some criticize the cost of the show, it must be admitted that its beauty forgives everything. At the helm, François Delaroziere is attentive to all the details of the movements, which makes us forget that we are in the presence of Machines, as their soul is so omnipresent.
So much praise which makes him one of the best ambassadors of La Machine, “even if I don’t know them personally”, he assures.

Franck keeps his photos from the show to himself. “I make them for pleasure. Perhaps one day they will be exhibited,” continues the amateur photographer, who has another job on the side. “I am a technician for the General Directorate of Aerospace Techniques, in Balma,” he explains.

His father before him

This fifty-year-old discovered photography through astrophotography. “At the time, I won a CNES competition with Halley’s Comet.” He will also be a freelance sports photographer for Ouest France and La Presse de la Manche at the same time as he works as a mechanic in nuclear submarines in Angoulême then Cherbourg.
A first exhibition on Breton landscapes, in 1995, even took him to Sarajevo, “to accompany journalists as part of a project with the Danielle Mitterrand Foundation. I took photos just at the end of the war.”
Franck settled in the Pink City in 2007, the city where he spent his first years of schooling since his father, an aeronautics engineer, lived here. “Today, I live not far from where I grew up.”
It was also in Toulouse that he enriched his experience as a photographer with training at the École nationale supérieure de l’AudioVisuel (ESAV).
Ultimately why does he make images? “It’s about being in relationship, exchanging and transmitting,” concludes Franck.