Route Nationale 1, which links Paris to the North Sea, the Belgian border and Great Britain is today undergoing a profound transformation, all the more quickly insofar as this major highway is being harmonized with the construction of the cross-channel fixed link.

This age-old traffic route is punctuated by traces of the jolts between European nations (Bataille of Crécy, Atlantic Wall, Field of the Cloth of Gold, …), of human activity (cathedral, power station) and particularities of the landscape that mark the transition from a path into the national major highway we know today. Motorways are going to replace nations.

It was just before this turn of the page that the Centre régional de la Photographie solicited two creators:

– a writer, Jean-Christophe Bailly, who used this opportunity to resume an earlier series of essays on architecture and urbanism.
– a photographer, Bernard Plossu, whose ephemeral approach to intermediate landscapes seen from cars is at the center of his life and work.