Traverser Cambrai is a counter city portrait of a small historical town in the north of France. The photographer Stephen Dock accustomed to theater, events and the dramas of history crosses though absence and daily seemingly banal scenes different layers of a complex history. This appeared non-appearance and tranquility in the images is voicing the momentary suspended threat of a heavy history. We articulated the images within the same appeared tranquility aiming to enforce this uncanny feeling of having arrived in static momentum where history is emptied of violence. Everything seems waiting, in suspense for continuity, a temporal space of peace, a surface in balance that as we know will soon be disrupted again. Or could we think that finally this kind of small European cities turn in to museums? The cover of the book is referencing Cambric, a plain-weave linen cloth made at or near Cambrai. Cambric cloth comes often in a kind of peaceful blue that seemed to us again expressing this rather frightening meta-historical sky.
A publication
by sun/sunPhotographies by
Stephen DockText by
Raphaële BerthoSoftcover
180 × 260 × 10 mm