A Tatami ephemera on park lawns in springtime, a parasol for cereals trying to keep cool, a screen in autumn, a cosy winter coat for bare trees. Nailed down, roped up, moored, floating or stuck down, wherever you go, both in the city and in the countryside, its lovely azure colour is dotted all over the landscape of the Japanese archipelago. The Japanese call it Ao Ba, “the blue sheet“. This is a very pretty name for a simple tarpaulin, a mass-produced square piece of plastic whose modest but nevertheless very useful job is to protect and insulate surfaces and objects in a country where typhoons and earthquakes are as common as hail showers. In order to reveal this subtle expression of the Japanese soul through the life of a plastic tarpaulin, it probably needed an outside eye predisposed for this kind of poetic interpretation of the world. Bertrand Desprez has the gift of sensitivity and humour and, during his numerous trips to the Japanese archipelago, he allowed himself to be surprised by these amazing blue traces, sometimes to the point where he allowed them to guide his footsteps and direct his trip, taking him in unexpected directions. The perfection, nobility and purity with which their hands have sometimes managed to smooth, fold, roll or rope up this makeshift companion is absolutely fascinating... Claire Dé