A few years ago, the retired 40L milk cans, were tired of being covered by the flowers of the poppies, edelweiss and gentianes becoming umbrella stands in a corner of a hall : they decided to launch a movement as an answer in order to obtain a graceful profession.

It is during this great manifestations done by the end of the Nineties, that the photographer Gérard Benoît à la Guillaume, sensitive to their revolution, he joined without doubts to their claims of reinvindication.

Nowadays, he was adopted by this cans colony, he is also a privileged witness of their jokes. Mischievous, these cans are settled in natural or urban sites, and create even events.

In a few words…

Which is the message of your friends, the cans ?

They tell us “Attention, do not give up on us… Respect our memory, respect the work that we have provided, and do not let us to finish as umbrella-stands, or as a support of a doubtful artistic expression… Respect our integrity. ” That is our reinvindication. Due to the fact that that they have been rejected, they aspire to a retirement, or a second life,with more grace. That is what I try to propose to them.

Which object “milk can” did inspired you ?

It was in a small village in Switzerland, Villeboeuf, in French-speaking Switzerland. I was arriving to milk-cheese factory. Opposite to that factory, in the villages fountain, the cheesemaker had put to soak two cans (called boilles in Switzerland). They contain milk to keep it fresh. He had opened the lids, and it is there that I saw them. They look like the good men. I was already very sensitive to the anthropomorphism, i.e. everything that looks alike human by its form. The anthropomorphic objects, they surround us, they are seen by us everyday. From the socket to a pressure-cooker handle, and or an USB key ! That was the first time that I had seen The can : and I had two at home, then five, thirty and today more than 100…

I like the beautiful objects, and their design. Even the cans have several designs : the last ones do not have the same shape as the first ones. This is a way of respecting people who worked tpn that, who built these cans. My interest is also to get in to the recycling : I recover these objects which will go to the garbage, or God knows where, to try to create something out of it. It is a step influenced by the new “réalistes” such as Arman, who has accumulated hundreds of identical objects, and also carried out his work in Landart...

The can is a mythical object, an identifier, one of the strong symbols of the rural world, and lastly an object used to be milk transporter, and especially deesigned for that : it is the link between the udder of the cow and the cheese. In fact I like this idea, what I mean, according to my calculations, only one milk can have received on average 1.460.000 liters of milk, and have taken part in the manufacture of 146.000 kilos of cheeses : that really impresses me ! And I carry about a 100 cans on my truck…

Are the “occupied” sites strategic ?

It is the objective of the Cans Without Borders project : to say that there is a balance of recovering, a reciprocity of recovery between the reception sites and the cans. Those have a stragic role. They stress elements in the site which can be interesting in termsof architecture, production, lines, forms. It is a developing element of the inheritance in which they are accomodated. On the same way, the curves of an inheritance, a landscape for example, can stress the cans and return them still more sympathetic.

These spaces must show rigid lines, a little right like the pier of a port for example, of some curves : the hills, the laces of a road… I like to marry the existing forms and reliefs.

Which are your next events ?

I like to have a ludic fanatasy/like approach. As we could use the expression “jazzy” for the music, I like to make “arty”photographs : it is a light photograph, without any intellectual and\or serious concept, easy to be learned by the public. I like when images have a social function, amusing and related, and that they serve to some patrimonial values. There is a political dimension in the broad sense of term : I speak about development of society, an evolution towards something moreover progressist, more human. I try to lead the reader-spectator to question himself, to ask “Are we damaging the architecture on the country, as we did not take into account existing one” : It is about searching a little bit more of ingéniosité, to make the modern to be better adapted to the existant enviroment. My photographs are here to show in advance that kind relationship with our inheritance.

Interviewed by Maya Marin

Gérard Benoît à la Guillaume

Gérard Benoît à la Guillaume is a franc-suisse photgrapher who lives and develppe his work in cheval, situated over the border. He loves tamiser the regional heritage in order to personalize their characteristics The interpretation and the choice of each one of the subjects can let us know his affection for the style of the « Nouveaux réalistes » and the Land-Art.

Thanks to the arrival of the numerical photographs, he stills has a disadvantage according to the analysis made by Joan Fontcuberta : « The art of photograph lie because its nature doesnt allow another way but to lie. The principal disadvantage is the utilization of that lie, the photograph, the intenctions that the photographie serves, and of course the control that it has over its lies ».

To suggest is better than to show, to surprise, to question, to entertain, there it is the practice of « arty » of the brute photograph of pleasure.

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The contain images in this website are the product from Gérard Benoît à la Guillaume original work. All the rights are reserved. No images can be printed, copied or reproduced, even partial, without any explicit agreenment.