2008-2009 Berlin, Brussels, Marseille, Stockholm, Buenos Aires
At night, everywhere in the big cities, people move, work, get bored, get drunk, make love, each participating in their own way in this great insomnia. The night breaks taboos and incites to go off the rails. Darkness is pierced by artificial lights. I capture on film the neon lights and dimmed lamps, cigarette smoke, the movement of bodies or their immobility in front of the lens to prolong fleeting moments. On the lookout for improbable encounters, it is the potential of each to be impudent and to inhabit a frame that attracts me. During the day, these night birds blend into the crowd, playing another role, and then seem terribly common. At night, I am attached to them. I imagine their story, and the gap between who they are and what they want to express touches me. I have the feeling that they are familiar to me, they embody an image that already existed in me. My photographs are constructed from this imaginary world, feeding on their personality and their ability to express my obsessions.
The camera is a tool to invent strange situations that would not have existed otherwise. It creates magic that encourages people to reveal themselves in a posing game. These images allow me to keep a trace of my wanderings and to tell a certain story of the characters who haunt them. I capture in the madness of the night these rare moments of abandon and grace.