In 1983, Wim Wenders travelled through the American West in search of locations for the shooting of "Paris, Texas". In the process, he produced an impressive sequence of photos of the country, glimpsed with the professional - and at the same time personal - eye of one of the greatest German directors of our time.





"Photography enables you to grasp a place first time round. In fact, photography often tends to become impossible in a place you're already familiar with. Going back somewhere seldom accompanies a desire to take photos.... Photography is a means of exploration, it's a vital part of travel, almost as essential as a car or a plane. The photo camera makes arrival in a place possible."


"Behind the photos is a wish to look at something (regarder) and to preserve it (garder). The french word gets it nicely -
re-garder. The photos Walker Evans took in the Depression were just that: preserving something that was going to disappear in three of four years' time, in your eye and in your memory."


Text and photographs from the book
Written in the West