95 Agnès Varda, Ulysse (1954). Black and white photograph.
definite, its meaning less so. Varda looked at the photo from time to time over the following decades and was compelled eventually to turn her fascination into the film Ulysse, in 1982. In it she offers several approaches to the image. First she explores how it marked her transition from photographer to filmmaker. Then she takes the photo as a document belonging less to her personally than to history. Varda researches national and world events that happened the month she took the photo, but none seems to have any bearing on it. She goes in search of the two people. The man, Fouli Elia, was a model in 1954. By 1982 he was a director of photography at Elle magazine. Varda contacts him, but he is not interested in remembering. The boy, Ulysse, is the son of Spanish refugees who were
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