Like many independent elderly people, Olivier’s grandmother had bought her own coffin in advance. Made of solid oak with champagne-coloured silk cushioning, it cost ₤3,500. At the last moment, though, she decided she’d rather be cremated. After her death, Olivier was saddled with the coffin, so he put it up for sale on Le Bon Coin, a French variation of eBay: “Solid oak coffin. Never used except for decoration. ₤500.”
Wisely, Olivier added the proviso: “This is a serious ad. Jokers and curiosity-trippers, please do not reply.” This posed a problem for French photographer Thierry Bouët, who, while not a time-waster, was not interested in purchasing the second-hand coffin, but only in photographing it and its reluctant owner. “I knew I had to contact the seller and ask him if I could make a portrait, because this is such a very unusual item, even by Le Bon Coin standards,” he says, still sounding a little excited. “But I also know I have to go carefully on the telephone because, well, it is a coffin. It is funny for me, for sure, but maybe not for him.”
In the end, Olivier was happy to pose with his grandmother’s unused coffin, perching on one end of it, laughing, with his mobile phone to his ear. “Olivier was actually one of the few people who really understood what I was trying to do and was happy to collaborate,” says Bouët, “but I never found out if he ever sold the coffin.”
Bouët’s series, Personal Affairs, merges portraiture and self-conscious documentary – all the photographs are staged by him – to, in his words, “illustrate the existence of a community of people that do not know each other but are united by what they do”. In this instance, what they share is not an interest or hobby, but the act of selling a personal item to a stranger on Le Bon Coin. The items range from the humble (a set of Pernod glasses, a lounger) to the extravagant (a 74ft yacht, a small plane, a castle) and add up to an inventory of French small-town interests and obsessions, as well as a fund of anecdotes.
“With every personal item, there comes a story,” says Bouët, a tall, enthusiastic ironist with a camera, whose exhibition has become one of the surprise hits of this year’s Arles photography festival. “Often they have a touch of sadness because people are getting rid of objects that have been in the family for decades, but now seem suddenly old-fashioned or no longer useful.” One woman put her beloved wooden stepladder, used for picking fruit, up for sale after her family bought her a new metal one, which was more compact, safer and lighter. Another couple were parting with a folding caravan they had bought from a neighbour in 2005. They had travelled all over France with it, but now needed some extra cash to help pay for their 50th wedding anniversary party.
Bouët, who studied law before turning to photography while serving in the French army, is meticulous in his preparation and his composition. He had to clear an entire back garden of clutter before photographing a woman lounging precariously in her metal sun-chair. Many people put the phone down on him when they realised he was not a buyer or refused to be in the photographs: “Sadly, there are many great scenarios from Le Bon Coin that only exist in my head.”
Other images, though, and the stories behind them, are priceless. The man pictured pulling his bright yellow light aircraft – €32,000, offers accepted – across a field is a mechanic from Sartrouville who assembled it from scratch in his spare time. Everything but the engine and the aeronautical instruments in the cockpit was designed and laboriously built by hand. Was he sad to have to sell it? “No, not at all,” says Bouët. “His hobby is to build, rather than to fly. He spent 12 years making it, but he only flew it for a total of 60 hours.” Pierre’s new goal is to build an ultra-light aircraft in only four years.
The humour in Bouët’s portraits tends to the bittersweet and slightly absurd. We only see the back of a man mounting a racehorse in his expensive Italian riding boots (“size 41, very good condition, ultra-supple leather”). The face of the young man wearing an expensive overcoat that once belonged to his hero, French singer Maurice Chevalier, is hidden in shadows beneath a street light on a dark Parisian street. He could be a character from one of Chevalier’s more melodramatic songs. In another image, a young man strides purposefully down a sunny city street carrying the pair of skis he wants to sell.
Often the circumstances defined the images. The portrait of the children sleeping in their wallpapered bedroom came about when he contacted the seller of several rolls of Farrow & Ball wallpaper. “She was a professor of mathematics, but she had miscalculated the dimensions of the wall.” Another time, he was just about to give up on the idea of photographing a castle that was for sale, when the owner showed him a fireman’s pole that connected the top floor to the bottom. “It was everything I could have asked for,” says Bouët, “so I am grateful to the previous owner whose fantasy was to be a fireman and to the owner who agreed to pose on it though it was not really even his pole.”
Bouët sees Personal Affairs as “photographic theatre”. “The characters in the photographs are united in their interests and their necessity. Every action, even the decision to sell something, has a human story or small drama behind it. These tell us something of the nature of everyday French life and of everyday life everywhere.”
‘Thierry Bouët, Affaires Privées’ is at the Grand Halle, Arles, until 20 September 2015. A book of the same name is published by Editions Xavier Barral, €25
