Nice-Premium: The first photo speaks of childhood. Can you describe it to us?
Bruno Wolkowitch: My daughter with her stuffed toy in her arms on a shabby sidewalk with a very melancholic look. It would be a black and white, analog photo.
N-P: Adolescence
B.W.: A way to represent suffering. A girl with a torn T-shirt full of pins.
N-P: Appearance
B.W.: A politician.
N-P: Twenty years old
B.W.: A painting by Jean-Paul Rembas about Rimbaud.
N-P: Cinema.
B.W.: Claudia Cardinale on the ground when she gets knocked down in “Once Upon a Time in the West”
N-P: Heist
B.W.: A scene from Michael Mann’s movie. The attack when De Niro exits the bank. Al Pacino waits with his shotgun.
N-P: TV movie.
B.W.: John Cassavetes in Johnny Staccato. There still aren’t any DVDs. I have them on tapes. It’s the most beautiful series. It’s a series from 1959: there was a jazz pianist who also played a private detective. It was sublime!
N-P: Crime series.
B.W.: Film noir, like “The Big Sleep.”
N-P: Thriller.
B.W.: Clint Eastwood in I don’t know what. This actor embodies the thriller genre.
N-P: Theater.
B.W.: The auditorium of an Italian-style theater, empty with all the red seats. Totally empty. The first time I enter a theater, I step on stage and say to myself, “This is where it’s going to happen.” I look at this empty auditorium and it’s very impressive. I have already taken this photo. This scene is religious, it’s like a church.
N-P: Church
B.W.: The Thoronet Abbey.
N-P: Actor
B.W.: Paul Newman, because I heard on the news that he was very sick, and it saddens me. I’ve dreaded this moment, since I was around ten, when he would die. I adore this actor.
N-P: Have you ever met him?
B.W.: No.
N-P: A dream?
B.W.: No, I’m not someone who dreams about these things.
N-P: Dream.
B.W.: Entering a painting that I would create. For example, a canvas by Brack, evolving within the painting and wandering around in it, that’s a dream!
N-P: Actress
B.W.: Gina Lorents, she’s 70 years old. I saw her in person at the Deauville festival 10 meters away from me. She’s the “Simone Signoret” of America.
N-P: Meal.
B.W.: At the moment, I am passionate about tajines. I cook every day. At home, I’m the one who cooks… Meal… I think of still life paintings. It’s very difficult to take a photo of food… How to photograph when a dish is boiling? If I photograph with the lid, you can’t see anything. If I remove the lid, it’s no longer a tajine. Impossible to photograph as I would like…
N-P: Music.
B.W.: Bob Dylan, in any form.
N-P: Yesterday
B.W.: Yesterday, when I got off the plane, I had the impression that there were more wheelchairs waiting than people getting off the plane.
N-P: Sport
B.W.: Yannick Noah’s face when he won the French Open, when he looked at his father.
N-P: Do you know Nice?
B.W.: Very well. I lived around here. I believe the cat that was in the bar at the Negresco has died. The one I knew 25 years ago, obviously. I used to go to the Negresco and I had no money. While my girlfriend was attending university in Nice, I would wait for her, go to the cinema, and two or three times, I went for a coffee at the Negresco to look at the decor. And there was this cat on that chair. He lived there.
N-P: Future.
B.W.: I have a baby that I constantly photograph and I can’t imagine what she will look like in 10 years. It’s an impossible photo.
N-P: And the last photo, I’ll let you take it, here’s the camera…
B.W.: …first, I’m going to turn off the flash and set up the camera to take a black and white photo.
