What can you see at the 17th Carnet de Voyage festival
Every year in Clermont-Ferrand, lovers of travel — and especially of travel journals — meet at the Carnet de Voyage festival.
Across three floors of the Polydôme in Clermont-Ferrand, illustrators, painters, photographers, publishers and booksellers present visitors with the best of travel: notebooks, magazines, books, essays, comics and guides. I won't give an exhaustive account of this 17th Carnet de Voyage festival — instead, freeze-frames on my favourites.
Bouts du Monde magazine
It was in 2011, on the T27 Beijing–Lhasa train, that I met part of the Bouts du Monde editorial team. Every two months, Bouts du Monde gives travellers the floor — they present the countries or regions they discovered in their own way. Texts, photos, drawings, sketches: so many ways to make you dream and travel.
Find Bouts du Monde on Facebook or on the online shop.
Éditions Transboréal
A French publisher of great traveller-explorers, Transboréal represents 138 authors and 161 French-speaking travellers who set out to explore a region of the world and share their discoveries through books or films. Transboréal also runs a travel bookshop whose 5,577 titles are available online. During the Carnet de Voyage festival, part of the collection is on display.
Nicolas Jolivot's notebooks
He talks about his notebooks with passion: "I use accordion notebooks and I've turned them sideways to draw vertically." And indeed, Nicolas Jolivot presents long drawings of Shanghai. They evoke that vibrant, rich city with fine, precise lines that are also delicate and moving.
Éditions Apeirons
Describing themselves as "a publisher of poetic art", Éditions Apeirons present "accordion" books very much in line with Nicolas Jolivot's approach. The books in the « Double-JE » collection are made by hand. They take the form of strips folded accordion-style (Leporello). The cover is tinted card with hot stamping and cut-out windows. Once the prints and covers arrive, we craft them one by one, "by hand" and "at home".
Médecins Sans Frontières's Naufragés exhibition
In 2015, nearly a million people fled to Europe with no option but to risk their lives at sea aboard makeshift boats, the European Union refusing to offer them legal and safe alternatives. Nearly 4,000 people died in the Mediterranean Sea in 2015 as a result.
Through photos, videos, testimonies and newspaper headlines, the exhibition shows the situation of migrants once they reach European soil. An installation symbolises the arrival of fragile boats on European shores and the moment when migrants discard the objects of their exile.
A way for "voluntary" travellers to remember that not everyone leaves their homeland by choice.
Éditions Nomades
Since 2010, Éditions Nomades has been creating "different" books — made by travellers, for travellers. Through notebooks, albums or guides, readers find a point of view that resonates with them: a human, authentic, sensitive approach, away from mainstream publishing. Travel books that are artistic, practical or playful — but above all, unique.
More about the Carnet de Voyage festival
2017: LIFE IN THE CITY
Cities are most often explored on foot, sometimes by bike, with senses alert to smells, sounds and colours. The traveller is offered the ballet of those who come and go — they pass by, hurry, or settle on terraces; they walk along the river or the seafront. At home or just passing through, working or watching, they make up the plural and varied life of markets, station halls, metro platforms, cafés or red-light districts.
Under the lights of day or night, the city is an adventure playground for the traveller who has set out to meet the life unfolding there.
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