“Often we hear that everything has already been photographed, that photography has participated in this whole idea of postmodernism, where it became impossible to propose new forms and where only some sort of recycling is allowed, to say it a very broad and synthesizing way. Let’s take for instance the picture of the cow, which is a direct reference to the cover of the Pink Floyd album Atom Heart Mother. It’s clear to me that with photography, it’s impossible to plagiarise or to do a “remake” of an existing picture. It’s never very far from this, but still it leads to the production of a new picture. In our collective images, there are things that are with us, things that we can recognise very easily, which are coming back again and again, like sunsets for example. But it’s never plagiarism, because, even if you get as close as possible to a referent image, still, you’ll end producing a new image. Photography is quite fascinating in this sense.” (…)

Cows, pigeons, tourists, wars and folklore from Old Europe: a conversation between Guillaume Janot and François Piron, translated by Thomas Boutoux — Extract
Published in Roses and Guns, Filigranes editions, 2006