Street Series

Ma Méditerranée - Part I

I fell in love with my town Marseille as soon as I settled in it four years ago. This is highly due to its Mediterranean culture: a slower rhythm of life than in other big cities, the sea close by, the sun shining, the outside life… and, of course, the local cuisine. Starting to explore other cities and places around this sea, I noticed that most of the time they were also places where I felt at home. Different places, different countries, but something similar.

At first, the photos presented were not meant to be in a series, but looking back to them, I found it funny how we can mix them, forgetting where and when exactly they were taken. Now it is an ongoing series, that I will probably work on happily during the rest of my life. I would like to include for the next parts, photos from countries on the other side of the Sea, in the African continent.

Marseille - Nice - La Ciotat - Saint Tropez - Cinque Terre - Sorrento - Peloponnese - Kapsali
January 2020 to March 2021.

Isochronus = 1 km

As for many people, my 2020 year was marked by the coronavirus situation, so do my photos. I was no longer able to travel, what usually inspires me a lot. My mood was doing ups and downs following our government weekly statements: lockdown, curfew, partial reopening of stores and cafés.
I always try to do something positive and/ or creative in bad circumstances. This series tries to transcribe this variation: the feeling to loose my Liberty, new hopes, and the intention to live a normal life despite everything. During the hardest lockdown in France, we were not authorised to go further than one kilometre around our home - hence the title of this series - all the pictures presented have been taken in this perimeter and many of them from the window of my living room.
Fortunately, with the years, only good memories remain. What I will remember most are my evenings watching the stars.

Marseille - April to December 2020

Magnetic Istanbul

IST - It has been exactly three years since my first visit to Istanbul. My eyes are scrolling around trying to reach back some anchor points of my memory. No way, I feel like a perfect stranger. Maybe it is just because I am in a brand new airport, the previous one being out of service. Maybe the country has changed during these years. Or maybe, I have changed. I am lost here in the grand hall looking for the bus that will drive me downtown, and lost in my mind wondering what happened to my young self, much more adventurous, reminding me how fear free I landed in Turkey the first time.
When discovering a place or someone for the second time, a strange process starts, you are looking for the differences, and the new things that you had not noticed at first, you try to confirm your first impressions. Have I caught it right or was I mistaken?
Finally the bus. Night Ride. The water seller on the bus. Almost falling asleep. No internet connection. The high hotel towers, we are arriving. Last run up the hill. Bus stop at Taksim square. The metro station entrance. The mosque that was under construction, now finished. The always animated Istikal street.
When visiting a place or meeting someone for the second time, you are not running after the landmark monuments, nor after the commonplaces questions. You try to live the town as the locals, take the time to sit and observe.
This café, with green chairs in Beyoglu. Closed roads for the marathon, a quiet Istanbul in the fog. The just inaugurated Galataport. Crossing the Bosphorus, still magical, out of the time. An finally here it was, a perfect anchor point of my memory, on the ferry quay nothing had changed. The corn seller of Eminönü.

Istanbul - November 2021

Urban Jungle