Ah time! Our dear time, what a pleasure to be talking about you. You who decides of everything, who regulates our day and our life, and, at some point, who defines what is fast and what is, by opposition, slow. Zoé is definitely fast, running around all day, never losing a second. I, on the contrary, can be considered as slow. My life is basically slow in the morning and not too fast in the afternoon which is funny because you manage to see things differently.
Take a camera for example. Its speed determine how much time its sensor will have to print everything it sees on a card or a film. Set it up on a high shutter speed, at around 1/2000 sec, it will only show you what happens in this timeframe as it will assemble into an image. Less data equals sharp images.
Now, set it up on a low speed, at around 10 sec. With A LOT more data to assemble, it will first take time to process (I told you it was slow…) and then you will end up with a very blurry outcome. No perfect recollection of what happened, but a special interpretation, giving you, more or less, only a vibe of the moment.
And now, welcome to my slow life, where everything is a blur!
With that in mind, and our life being so fast, everyone trying their best to do more and fit the most into their day, I thought it was time to sit down and enjoy the moment. Having Zoé as a muse was obvious, as she has always been open to new ideas, really motivated, curious and a really smooth and talented longboarder. I also thought mixing someone fast with something slow could be interesting.
And with all that reading, you still don’t know what it’s about… Don’t worry, I’ll get to it! So, initially, with this project, I wanted to slow things down (not her surfing though), and focus on things we don’t normally have time to focus on. Take gliding for example. How is gliding on a longboard different? How does it feel? What is the best feeling Zoé can get? Hard questions to answer with words as we don’t take time to reflect on them. “Dance”, “approach”, “elegance”, “flying”, “addictive”, and “art” came into the discussion which, as you understood, does not focus on surf performance.
To emphasise my point about slow, I decided to shoot Zoe’s fast surfing with a slow shutter speed, gathering the best moments of our discussion with the best images. All of this topped by a music specially composed to suit her surfing, her style and her feelings. The outcome is about putting the original vibes of surfing into the main focal point, with a slow edit all about the vibes of Zoé Grospiron’s surfing.
Antoine Justes photographer and video maker
