L'Usure du monde

In 1953, Swiss writer/traveller Nicolas Bouvier left Geneva in a Fiat Topolino with a typewriter and the intention to go to India. His trip lasted four years and finished in Japan. The only luxury he had was his little car that took him where he wanted to go, and a slow- ness that he transformed into art. The first 17 months of the trip took him as far as the Khyber pass, on the Paki- stan/Afghan border. Here he decided to complete Usage du monde (The Way of the World), the story of this drift that became a cult book through- out the world. In November 2004, photographer Fre- deric Lecloux retook the same trip in a Fiat. His journey would take more than a year. What came out of it was an exceptional travel album that he summarizes in a few words : “I trav- elled without visiting the exact same places, seeing the exact same set- tings, or writing the exact same words as Nicolas Bouvier. And more impor- tantly I did not walk in the same tracks as Nicolas Bouvier that the wind of the roads had smoothed over a long time ago, but on the contrary I worked to bring to the surface the emotions that his work stirred in me...”