Lottery

Is it when making a picture that you are, in a way, connected with the expression of this "inward" voyage?
Yes, although the verbal expression of this is most difficult and awkward, and that is annoying. You see, I'm always trying to understand the individual that I am. But there is the continual constraint of living everyday life to deal with. A kind of fury grows as a result because we are not really free. Then there comes a sort of slow boiling up inside so that finally we explode. Then, abruptly, there is that exasperation that at one moment translates itself into a need to be filled with wonder, a need for a kind of happiness of the eye and a need to look with intensity and with courage and a need, perhaps, to move inward.
Finally, there is that moment when we are truly visionary. There, everything works tremendously well. But all this is only a part of that great game that puts us into a trance, into a state of receptivity. This trance doesn't last long, however, because life always calls you back to its commands. There are always contingencies. But somehow, despite it all, the effect does last. I think that it could be classed as a feeling. For me it is a kind of "religion of looking".
Robert Doisneau

Dialogue with Photography, Paul Hill & Thomas Cooper