“93 you can’t test”, said Mac Tyer in 2006. Eighteen years later, photographer Marvin Bonheur seems to take up the rapper's antiphon with The Happiness trilogya book celebrating Seine-Saint-Denis using beautiful and raw photos like the Bobigny Labor Exchange building.
Released this fall by Cé Editions, this very beautiful book by Marvin Bonheur retraces chronologically, in three parts (“Alzheimer, the memory of my 93”; “Therapy, the face of the forgotten”; “Renaissance, Revanche 93”) four years of photographic practice and questions about its relationship to Seine-Saint-Denis. It all started for him in 2014, the year he arrived in Paris after leaving 93, which he then began to explore and photograph. This is what makes this book exude honesty: Marvin Bonheur is a local. He doesn't fantasize about 93, he lived it and he photographs it (on film) with no other objective than to tell the daily life of the inhabitants and their environment.
A nice breath
This gives series of landscapes with buildings worthy of the former USSR (ha this fascination for the vertical perspective), businesses left in the 1990s or this cracked building slab which gives the impression of having been covered lava. The other subject is the people, who play Uno, who struggle in line 13, who go motocross, who queue at the ice cream truck – very Martin Parr this one – or who demand justice.
No doubt that having grown up there biases our outlook, but this Happiness trilogy is a nice breather in the current climate and a great gift to give to your uncle on repeat on the news channels.
The happiness trilogyby Marvin Bonheur, Cé Editions, 208 pages, €50.
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