All images by François Ollivier. Used with Creative Commons permission.
We all strive to make our travel photos as perfect as possible, sometimes even going as far as looking for the “less traveled” paths on top of some popular, “Instagrammable” locations. Canadian photographer François Ollivier, however, wanted to explore an outrageous idea for travel photography, going towards a “weird” route instead of the usual. The results are pretty amusing, even for Ollivier himself.
On his latest set, Montreal-based Ollivier shared the inspiration behind the humorously titled Weird holiday pictures taken by a compulsive. “Three years ago, I posted some work here on Behance and received this comment. Funny yet accurate, it made me think about my relationship with photography in very common situations and the unconscious aesthetization of things.” We can be glad that he was actually a good sport about this feedback and even went on to use it as an inspiration to create something a little bit different.
The set is comprised of photos Ollivier took while on holiday in France and Portugal. These are definitely not your usual travel snaps, and neither do they showcase any of the countries’ touristy haunts. Each photo is more like a snapshot of random stuff he found while strolling on a random street. And they just so happen to be eye-catching enough to be captured by what he imagined to be a “compulsive” traveler engaging in an “unconscious aesthetization of things.”
Weird holiday pictures taken by a compulsive doesn’t really have any other objective other than standing out as a collection of curiosities. I think that’s actually a worthwhile exercise to some extent, not only when we travel but even for our everyday street or slice of life photography. At best, it trains us to look for details and stories that could still make for a unique body of work.
Visit François Ollivier’s website and Behance portfolio to see more of his photography.
