Just The Messenger

“It’s not something that you can do at the beginning of your career just so that you can have it in your credentials. It’s a life job, because you will change. The more war you experience, the more professional your work becomes. And the people you photograph need you to be professional. They don’t care about your emotions; they have their own. You’re just the messenger. You have to be able to put all your emotions aside, and it’s not easy; it takes time. So unless you’re rich, you have to be ready to have no possessions, to lose all your girlfriends, and to be strong enough to live with no sense of comfort or clothing or food. Even though I supposedly live here, I’m actually visiting Paris. I’m having a good sandwich in a good hotel, but that’s not my life; that’s my vacation.”

Patrick Chauvel: Born in Paris in 1949, Patrick Chauvel is a veteran of more than twenty armed conflicts beginning with the Six-Day War and Vietnam in the sixties, and continuing to the present day.