BOOK:Charles Johnstone & Lea Simone Allegria-Je Ne Sais Quoi,SUN Publications

For many photographers, the freedom and immediacy of the Polaroid process offers an intriguing alternative to their normal picture making activities. For Charles Johnstone, this is very much the case. In 2013, he self-published a photobook entitled “Libby”, based on a selection of Polaroids from his archive, from pictures that were never intended to be published.  “Je ne sais quoi” was produced in close collaboration with the French illustrator and writer Lea Simone Allegria. Johnstone found Allegria through Instagram and became fascinated with her drawings. They started up a conversation and later connected in the offline world, discovering more common interests. In the end, Johnstone suggested they collaborate on a book, and Allegria agreed. He used expired Polaroid 600 film to photograph Allegria in Paris (her hometown), and she responded to his photographs with illustrations and drawings, some of them coming from her collection, while others (including the cover) were produced for this particular project. The combination of drawings and photographs offers an exciting back-and-forth visual narrative, where external mixes with internal, and reality gives way to interpretation and imagination. A few of Allegria’s drawings appear with hand written text. One full spread shows a young girl on a bed hugging a pillow, and looking at us with one eye. The text above reads “Someday i will give up on everyone i know”, the pose both resigned and a hair defiant. While Johnstone’s photographs set Allegria in her daily surroundings, the illustrations seems to reveal more of her inner world, with her feelings and thoughts coming through in the nuances of the drawings.-Dimitris Lempesis