The volume ‘Passé Présent Futur’ explores the intersections between time, gesture and vision, born from a collaboration between the Fondation d’entreprise Hermès and Loose Joints. Through photography, the book explores the contemporary meaning of craftsmanship, production and imagination.
Flicking through it, a non-linear narrative emerges, with images focusing on details and surfaces, such as hands at work or tools marked by use. The photography invites slow reflection, prompting the observer to look at what usually goes unnoticed.
In the pages, elements such as abrasive wheels lined up in a workshop appear as an industrial archive, where the circles seem immobile yet full of potential, evoking a past ready to be reactivated. Other images transform worn work surfaces into surfaces resembling pictorial maps, accumulating traces of time.
From an editorial point of view, the book plays with the alternation between full and empty spaces, creating a thoughtful balance. The title “Passé Présent Futur” structures the narrative in a non-chronological way: the past manifests itself in the materials, the present in the bodies at work, and the future in the act of photographing and documenting these processes. In this way, photography acts as a reflective bridge.
‘Passé Présent Futur’ requires time, attention and a critical eye, demonstrating how photography can be a space for thought as well as representation.
