A filmmaker nearing ninety and a photographer in his early thirties drive a truck through rural France. Inside the truck are an instant photo booth and a large printer. They photograph the people of a village, print them as big as the side of a building, and paste them on that village's walls. This is Faces Places (Visages Villages, 2017), the documentary Agnès Varda and JR made together.

The French theatrical poster, with Varda and JR walking past a freight car covered by a giant photograph of eyes.
The French theatrical poster, with Varda and JR walking past a freight car covered by a giant photograph of eyes. Le Pacte

Two Photographers, One Film

Why would a photography magazine cover this film? Because both directors are photographers. JR made his name printing people's faces at huge scale and pasting them on walls in the street. Varda was a photographer before she made films. The two first met in 2015 and reportedly agreed right away to make a film in the French countryside, far from the cities.

The film screened out of competition at Cannes in 2017 and won L'Œil d'or, the festival's documentary prize. The following year it was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. It was the first time a Varda film had been nominated for an Oscar, and at eighty-nine she was the oldest nominee ever. It opened in Korea in June 2018.

Children gather beside JR’s photo truck, which has a giant lens printed on its side.
Children gather beside JR’s photo truck, which has a giant lens printed on its side. Cohen Media Group

Faces on the Walls

In Bruay-la-Buissière, in northern France, a row of old miners' houses was about to be demolished. Only one person still lived on the street: Jeanine, a miner's daughter. JR pastes a huge portrait of Jeanine across the front of her house. Standing outside and looking up at her own face, Jeanine cries. On the other houses in the neighborhood they paste photographs of miners from old postcards Varda had collected.

At the port of Le Havre, they print large photographs of the dockworkers' wives rather than the dockworkers. In a workplace where the men had always been the subject, the women's faces go up. Most of the photographs in the film work this way. They photograph people nobody knows by name and give the pictures back to them, where they live, at a size they can see.

Jeanine stands in front of her portrait covering the facade of an old miner’s house.
Jeanine stands in front of her portrait covering the facade of an old miner’s house. Le Pacte
Three full-length portraits of dockworkers’ wives pasted on shipping containers, with the three women standing in front.
Three full-length portraits of dockworkers’ wives pasted on shipping containers, with the three women standing in front. Le Pacte official press kit

Agnès Varda, Photographer

Varda started taking photographs in 1948 with a secondhand Rolleiflex. The next year she earned a photography diploma at night school, and from 1951 to 1961 she was the staff photographer of Jean Vilar's Théâtre National Populaire (TNP). While photographing the stage and its actors, she made her first feature, La Pointe Courte (1954). She kept taking photographs into the mid-1960s, after she had become a filmmaker. She died in 2019. In 2021 her family entrusted about 27,000 photographs she took between 1948 and 1970 to the Institut pour la photographie in Lille, France.

Varda’s self-portrait beside a large-format camera in her studio on rue Daguerre, Paris, in 1956.
Varda’s self-portrait beside a large-format camera in her studio on rue Daguerre, Paris, in 1956. Musée Carnavalet – Histoire de Paris, © Succession Agnès Varda

Photographs from those years appear in the film. JR pastes a picture of the photographer Guy Bourdin, taken by a young Varda, onto a Second World War German bunker lying toppled on a Normandy beach. When they come back a little later, the tide has washed the picture away. They also visit the small village cemetery where Henri Cartier-Bresson is buried. The grave of the photographer of the decisive moment is so plain it is hard to find.

A photograph of Guy Bourdin pasted on a tilted bunker on a Normandy beach.
A photograph of Guy Bourdin pasted on a tilted bunker on a Normandy beach. Le Pacte

Paste It Up, Let It Go

A photograph printed on paper and pasted up with glue does not last. Rain soaks it, the sea washes it off, and when the house comes down it goes too. The two of them know this and paste anyway. Anyone who has shot film for a long time may know the feeling. You take a picture to keep something, knowing the moment is already gone as you press the shutter. At Cartier-Bresson's grave, Varda calmly says that she is waiting for death.

The last scene is at Jean-Luc Godard's house in Rolle, Switzerland. Varda had arranged to meet him and went with JR. The door stayed shut, and the window carried only a cryptic message. Varda does not hide her hurt. A journey spent photographing faces and pasting them up ends without the one face she most wanted to see. What remains of a face that no photograph could hold?

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