Anyone who has ever taken a taxi in New York will quickly recognize

that Elodie Lachaud’s Taxi Series could only have been taken in America’s leading metropole.

Who did not sit in the back of a yellow cab, watching life pass by with one eye,

while the other is firmly fixed on the meter, that constant reminder that time is money in the Big Apple.

But Lachaud’s images are of course more than mere registrations.

In addition to the taxi, itself a symbol of being in between places, the warm dashboard colors,

the neon light reflections of New York’s urban landscape and the raindrops on the window

make us feel both at home and alienated.

According to Lachaud, a graduate from the Academie des Beaux Arts in Paris, the main motive in her work is mobility.

“I’ve always taken photographs of my wanderings. You can always see the same thing on them ...

the possibility of escape, of exodus, of desertion and of projection ... a feeling of uneasiness as well ...

I always have the word "borderline" on my mind. In a car, I feel free.

Inside one, you have, at any time, a changing vision of the undefined space of a moving car ...

a feeling of infinity. When I’m in a place, I always notice the emergency exit ... the vanishing point ...

I guess I’m claustrophobic.”

The mobility motive could be seen earlier in her photo series on Iceland and Palermo.

In the first, she drove across the island and at regular intervals took photos of the horizon.

Apart from the road or bridge she happened to be standing on – the horizon cutting the image in halves –

she showed not a single distraction in the foreground, thus producing the perfect road to nowhere.

Stuck between here and there, past and future, the image evokes a sense of being lost in a nameless place

that could be just about anywhere.

As such, the images are arguably still a good reflection of the icy isle that lies forgotten on the edge

of northern Europe and the Arctic.

In her Palermo series, we again detect her fascination for car interiors, as well as hallways, doors and elevators,

all similar symbols of being in between worlds.

I think however, that Serie Taxi is her most complete work to date, as said, because it captures the spirit of New York,

as well as the concept of being in between things, of being somehow at home, somewhere away from home.

 

Peter Speetjens, journalist