The Salon PhotoDoc. 2025 for Independent Photographers will take place from October 8th to 11th at the Hôtel de l'Industrie in Paris's prestigious 6th arrondissement. This year's exhibition features photographer Jacques Farine's compelling work, highlighting his unique perspective on contemporary landscape photography through train travel.
Farine will present his acclaimed exhibition titled "Les paysages GPS" (GPS Landscapes), a project he has been developing and producing since 1980. The artist draws inspiration from a nostalgic railway tradition, explaining his concept: "For many years, the SNCF (French national railway company) exhibited four black and white photographs in each compartment of its passenger cars. Housed in metal frames measuring 20 x 26 cm (or 29 x 32 cm, depending on the case), the SNCF showcased French tourist attractions by presenting landscapes and monuments from all of France's metropolitan regions."
The photographer reflects on how modern life has transformed our relationship with landscapes and travel. "Today, the speed of human activity, both in its movements and in its development, hinders the contemplation of landscapes," Farine observes. "Perception is fleeting: fragments of movement, a succession of retinal persistence that transforms each window into a screen on which a vision reduced to its haste scrolls by." He notes that the identity of anonymous places—spaces caught between urban and rural environments, awkwardly occupied by human activity—are now reduced to mere GPS coordinates.
Farine will also showcase his second series, "Les Paysages furtifs" (Furtive Landscapes), which he has been initiating and producing since 2013. This body of work explores the unique perspective that train travel offers for observing diverse environments. "The train allows for a deep and original penetration of the territories it crosses," the photographer explains. "It offers a wide range of typologies: urban, rural, residential, industrial, agricultural, wild or abandoned intermediate spaces, all subject to the vagaries of the weather and externalities due to human activity."
The artist describes the transformative effect of viewing landscapes from a moving train, noting how "through movement and speed, the train unfolds an image whose true measure is not always fully grasped." He elaborates on this concept: "Through a continuous inversion effect, movement acts as a bridge and creates incessant back-and-forths between the real panorama, the natural landscape, and the depicted landscape, as if each of these perceptions constituted successive layers and endowed the image with density and depth."
Farine's artistic philosophy centers on how the traditional photographic frame evolves when captured from a moving train. "In the exercise of landscape-making from the train, the frame as a constitutive element of the landscape has not disappeared; it has changed status to unfold in space," he explains. "It has moved from delimiting the perimeter of the image to that of its volume."
The exhibition opening will take place on October 8th from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. at L'Hôtel de l'Industrie, located at 4 place Saint-Germain-des-Prés, 75006 Paris. Visitors can explore Farine's work and connect with the artist through his website at www.jacques-farine.fr and his Instagram account @jacfarine. More information about the Salon PhotoDoc is available at https://photodocparis.com/salon-2025.
