From France With Love

From France With Love gradually took shape through a personal and family journey. That of returning to France after several years of living abroad in the United Kingdom. From 2014 onwards, following our move to the eastern side of Paris, our Augusts became marked by stays in different regions across France, following the great collective ritual of the summer holidays.

For eight years, I photographed these journeys, and sometimes others, without seeking to portray a postcard version of France, but rather to capture the everyday experience of these travels: the roads, the landscapes, moments of contemplation, ordinary scenes, the light, colours, and details that make up the experience of these moments.

Over time, the images accumulated like a visual diary, gradually revealing a portrait of summertime France, where my own emotions shaped a particular idea of the French provinces.

My intention was not to document France through a descriptive approach, but rather to search for a feeling. One I experienced during a stay in Ardèche in 2012, when I felt I was reconnecting with a part of my cultural identity after having lived in the United Kingdom for several years.

Through this project, I sought to explore how a country can be rediscovered through memory, cultural identity, emotions, and the experience of travel, somewhere between personal memories and shared cultural signs.

These elements (landscapes, roads, villages, beaches, countryside, light, colours, or everyday gestures) form a shared culture that is often perceived as ordinary precisely because it is such an integral part of our collective experience.

Through my own experience, From France With Love therefore attempts to create a sensitive and subjective portrait of summertime France, where personal memory and collective imagination meet.