JONATHAN CHERRY: Where are you from and what got you started with photography?

IRWIN BARBE: I’m from Paris and I live in Paris and Bordeaux, France. I started taking pictures after I saw the movie Virgin Suicides, when I was about 14 years old.

JC: What are your plans photographically for the second half of 2010?

IB: I’d like to buy a stereoscopic camera, such as the Stereo-Realist. This technique looks really nice. I also want to publish a photo book with my friends Luna and Lyn, but I doubt that we’ll find any editions willing to publish our book.

JC: What does photography mean to you?

IB: It doesn’t mean much. It’s just a way to forget how pointless everything I do is.

JC: What is your recent project all about?

IB: I will be making a photographic diary this summer. I’ll shoot all the places I go to, all the people I meet and so on. As I don’t have any home anymore since my parents are moving, I will call it “Homeless Summer”.

JC: How highly do you value the actual experience of photographing as opposed to just simply documenting that experience?

IB: I don’t make any distinction between photographing and documenting. I guess I don’t care about photography in itself. Only the subject matters. I’m totally against photographers who say that “the important thing is not what is photographed, it’s how it’s photographed”.

JC: Who are some of your photography heroes?

IB: Hara Mikiko, Wolfang Tillmans, Larry Clark, Shomei Tomatsu, Eugene Richards, Todd Hido.

JC: What did you have for breakfast this morning?

IB: I didn’t have anything, I woke up at 1pm.