Sarah Bouillaud THE FANTASTIC TRAVEL

“The Fantastic Travel” is a series of photomontages made of pictures from the daily life of Sarah Bouillaud. Born and raised in Paris, Bouillaud was initially fascinated by the darkroom, but her experience as a graphic designer at an advertising firm inspired her to start manipulating her images, blurring the line between reality and fiction.

A long-time fan of graphic novels and illustration books such as L’entrevue by Manuele Fior and Blast by Manu Larcenet, as well as photographers Arthur Tress and Robert Frank, among others, Bouillaud combined her visual inspirations to create “a small piece of the world,” as she puts it. “On the one hand, I love that you can save everything you want with your camera. One the other hand, I love that you can choose a piece of reality and modify it,” she explains.

To create the images, Bouillaud uses a Canon PowerShot G1 X, because it’s powerful, small and simple—without all the bells and whistles that get in the way of making an image on the fly—and then plays with the images on her computer to achieve the effect she desires. “It’s an amazing experience when you are in front of a photograph and your mind starts to travel. It’s a kind of gymnastics game with your imagination, an off-moment in your daily life,” she says.

A former student of the Brassai Photography School and a graduate of Icart Photo School, both in Paris, Bouillaud continues working on “The Fantastic Travel,” while also beginning a new project about the “strange and intimate stories” that take place inside houses.

—Amy Touchette

Photos © Sarah Boulliaud sarabou.fr