Theo, Maud and America in the background
"I spent a year working as assistant art director at a major advertising agency until I couldn't anymore. I needed to hit the road lose track of space and time , explore the world and see everything, so I left my job I talked to Theo and that's where the Joe's Road adventure began," says Maud Chalard.
She also tells us that he is a globetrotter and that, as he could afford live from photography being very young, he has always traveled a lot, but that this was the first time that she she left her home in Paris for so long . Specifically, three months, in which they bought a van and crossed the United States until you reach Canada.
"It has always been a dream to be able to travel together," she says, in a conversation in which every two sentences there are a declaration of love . It is the same love that is breathed in their melancholic -and powerful- photographs of warm tones in which, in addition to beards, landscapes and prints folkies there is a lot of privacy. In the snapshots of couples who somehow seem to forget that she is there, that she exists in the face of her silence portraying tenderness as easily as she blinks (Her Ella Lovers de Ella series, in fact, has been included in magazines like Konbini, Ignant, Buzzfeed, Featureshoot, BoredPanda, Elle, Femina, Clikclk, Republica, Aplus…)
Of course, many of those couples are themselves (occurs in the last two photos), but others are people they meet along the way, old friends or new strangers. "What has surprised me most about the trip is how nice and kind the people we have come across are ", she will tell us after having traveled 18,000 kilometers through the America Most Essential.
" We have avoided taking main roads because what we wanted was to visit the maximum possible number of outdoor spaces and towns, in order to get to know "the real America". It's been great, and we've seen some pretty crazy stuff..." Maud continues. New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada and Arizona make up the skeleton of a trip that for many it only exists with a "someday" in front of it.
"The best is the feeling of total freedom. You have no home, you have no stress. The place where you park the van becomes your home, "she recalls on behalf of the two. And the worst? Getting up sweating in the middle of summer, "she recalls. Seems like a pretty low toll for these two young people whose vision, even behind the camera, seems to be only one.
" We are lovers, we share the same perspective about love and travel... We share everything." Sweet Maud is back with that to want of old soul bathed by an adolescent impetus. "We work with the same camera and the same film, we love it, and we wanted to create something homogeneous but since different points of view. It's interesting to be in the same place, with the same tools, and then see how the end result looks," she says.
"We never planned our shots, we do not prepare anything , but we try to put some magic in our lives to make them pretty s surrounding ourselves with good people and beautiful locations . And then the world becomes a playground ", the Parisian tells us about her shared creation process. "It is simply about be prepared for when we see the moment to take an image that we like; we always carry the camera in my bag. Basically, what we portray is just our day to day with the people we love ".
The curious thing about it is that she has only been dedicating herself entirely to photography for a few months, although when she truly fell in love with this art was three years ago, with the discovery of analog cameras (the only ones they use). Something similar happened to Theo (of course), although finding his uncle's old camera It took place during school, and since then he has found time to work to Adidas, Volcom, Absolut, Samsung, HTC and Nokia , to name just a few, and to be included in specialized and/or avant garde magazines such as Liberation, Fisheye, Neon, Paulette, Wad, Desilusion or Grazia.
The result of this sweet dream of youth ** will be published, in book form, ** this very year. When I ask the heroine of the trip about the project, she talks to me briefly about kilometers, dates and States , and she talks to me at length about passions and destiny: "It's about two lovers leaving France to enjoy the silence of American landscapes, meet people and explore and push your relationship. To be together 24 hours a day and do something crazy. We wanted to take photos and travel for a long time without separating. It changed our lives. And now we'll stay together forever."
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