Blaise Perrin

Having obtained a Master’s degree in film and audiovisual studies from Université Lumière Lyon II, in 2009 Blaise Perrin graduated from École Nationale Supérieure de la Photographie in Arles. Also in 2009, he was made a Lauréat of the French Académie des Beaux-Arts, following which he was awarded a two-year residency at Casa de Velázquez in Madrid. During his stay, he produced two series of photographs including one, L’Ouvrage, on the construction of a cathedral by a former monk, Justo Gallego Martínez (published in book form by La Fábrica in 2019).

Perrin’s first documentary film, La Ronde, tells the story of Yukio Shige, a retired police officer who, since 2004, has walked Japan’s Tojinbo cliffs, the site of the second-highest number of suicides in the country, in search of lives to save. Perrin’s photography and documentary-making explores out-of-the-way, forgotten, anachronistic places such as quarries and abandoned villages, drawing inspiration from “extra-ordinary” people who devote their lives to inordinately large projects.

Perrin’s residency project continued to follow Yukio Shige in his campaign to help people in distress, this time not on the cliffs of Tojinbo but in the places where they had rebuilt their lives. As such, Après Tojinbo is the continuation, the logical follow-up, to La Ronde. Perrin gives words, a voice, a face, to some of the people Yukio Shige has saved. They accept to tell the story of the road that led them to death, then back to life. This second instalment, through the diversity of these stories, gives food for thought on the difficulties of living in contemporary societies, the temptations of suicide, and the roads that can lead to rebuilding oneself.

Portrait : Lussas Marie Aynaud