Festival de la Photographie Surréaliste et Créative — or, if you prefer, the Surreal and Creative Photography Festival in Fréjus. A group exhibition. My photographs on display.
It feels strange, almost unreal, to see my work hanging here. I brought images from two earlier projects, both of which now feel distant, dated, perhaps even irrelevant. Standing in front of them, I find myself uneasy. When someone asks me to talk about the pieces on camera, that unease multiplies. I have no desire to show these works, and even less to discuss them. Yet I speak. And, as I do, it all feels like a slow-motion disaster I can’t quite step away from.
Some of the works in the exhibition are extraordinary, flashes of brilliance, or at least brilliance in the making. I’m inspired, overwhelmed, and occasionally numbed by familiarity. So much feels déjà vu. But then there are moments that cut through: Luca Izzo. Benoît Chapon. Francesca Meloni to name but a few. I want more of their kind of seeing in my life.
And the people, too many to name properly. Honest, stimulating conversations with Shirin, long exchanges with Sonja, who travelled six hours by train from Carcassonne just to be here. I’m deeply grateful. Barbara and Christophe as always, generous and steady. Krista, with her plan to detour through Turin to see the Shroud. I’ll be flying back from Nice; Shirin and Lindsey will drive all the way to London. Thirty hours in a car, a road movie waiting to happen.
And then there’s Fréjus itself. Walks at five in the morning, you should try it sometime. The town looks different then: raw, deserted, a little ghostly. My camera likes it that way. Street by street, I nibble at its solitude. One night, an apocalyptic downpour shook me awake at three. By five, it had passed. By daylight, no one seemed to notice it had ever happened.
