You might say that my blogs about my ‘highlights’ are coming thick and fast. Well, not that fast, considering there’s only one per month! The thing is, I don’t write much in between these blogs, which are basically a recap of what I’ve been up to over the past month. Which says a lot about my lack of inspiration when it comes to finding an interesting topic for a blog. In fact, my last three blogs were the ‘highlights’ of July, August and September! Not only do I struggle to write, but as you’ll see after reading this blog, I also struggle to take photos!

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#1

A photo you’ve already seen in a blog dedicated to this year’s Francofolies festival. I really like this photo because it exudes incredible energy. You can just make out the singer in the bright area, which fits with my perspective as a street photographer: the most important thing isn’t the show on stage, but what’s happening around it. In this case, at a concert, it’s the audience. Here, the light falls on the stage and the crowd in the form of rays, and the festival-goers’ gestures seem to respond, with their hands raised towards the source of the light. This photo is grainy, and I like its raw feel, with its highlights deliberately blown out during post-processing.

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#2

‘Women are beautiful,’ said Gary Winogrand, and of course I agree with him! His book was published in the midst of the feminist movement in the 1970s, but I don’t know how such a collection would be received today in our post-#MeToo era, where so many scandals have erupted.

When I take photos in the street, I can be attracted by several things. I’ve already talked about light, gestures and moments. But I’m also drawn to beautiful people, whether they’re men or women.

Some might dismiss this photo as just another picture of two pretty girls walking down the street, and therefore dismiss me as a photographer who is simply attracted to the physical beauty of these young women. I won’t lie to you, and it’s true that my eye was drawn to their youth and beauty. But I’ll tell you why I found this photo very interesting. Here, I also photographed youth as I see it every day on the streets of Saint-Denis. I haven’t forgotten that I’m documenting the streets of my city, and the photo shows several elements of this era.

I will come back to this point, but first I will talk about the almost identical posture of the young women. Just look at their legs. There is also a certain sense of sisterhood in the way they dress, which is almost identical. Denim mini shorts and black sleeveless tops. If you look more closely at the photo, you will see that they are both wearing an ankle chain on their right foot. Réunion suffers from junk food like no other place. We have overweight young people consuming fizzy drinks or fatty street food, which is available everywhere in the city, at all hours of the day. Here, the young girls are quite slim, but the one on the left is nevertheless holding a bottle of fizzy drink in her right hand and a small paper bag in her left, which I know contains local fried food that can be bought almost anywhere in the city. I won’t hide the fact that I feel like everyone in Saint-Denis is constantly snacking on something or holding a bottle of soda. It’s pretty scary from a health perspective…You also have the phone in the girl’s pocket. You must have noticed how girls carry their phones, which are getting bigger and bigger. Whether in their front or back pockets, there’s always something a little sexy about seeing these phones sticking out of their pockets, and the XXL size of the phones has a slimming effect on the girls’ figures, a bit like vertical stripes on clothing. Well, that’s not the case here with these girls, who are already very slim. The last element specific to this era is the electronic cigarette. I don’t know how old these girls are, but I think they must be just over 18. The tobacco industry has succeeded in promoting e-cigarettes as something cool and sexy to young people. Cigarette consumption has fallen, but young people are consuming e-cigarettes at an increasingly young age…

The final elements that make me love this photo so much are the carefree nature of youth that emanates from this scene and, of course, the delicate gesture that I managed to capture.

So no, this photo is not just another photo of two pretty young girls walking down the street. This photo is much more than that. It is a photo that is deeply rooted in its era.

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#3

On the street, there is always this desire not to photograph people in situations that do not show them in a favourable light, but also not to censor the street by not photographing what is dirty or ugly. I have decided to photograph everything. This man lying on the ground is unfortunately a familiar figure to the people of Saint-Denis. When he is more or less sober, he begs for money, and when he is completely drunk, he is always lying down somewhere. He lives on the street, goes to the city’s emergency room when he is not feeling well, and shortly afterwards, he is back on the streets. I regularly give him a few coins when I am hanging out in Saint-Denis. I know very well what that money will be used for, but I give it to him anyway… When you spend a lot of time on the streets, you see new people arriving on the pavements and you even witness their descent into hell. I’ve seen the evolution of other homeless people. Those who still took care of themselves a little, who tried to maintain some dignity, only to see them several months later as rags dragging themselves around the city. It breaks my heart. I had talked to one of them. I was surprised to realise that this man who had just arrived on the street was someone like you and me. Out of modesty, I didn’t ask him why he was now on the street. We just talked and I gave him some coins. What struck me was that he had beautiful long white hair that contrasted with his tanned skin. That same homeless man has been on the streets of Saint-Denis for several years now. He has now a empty stare, his hair is cut very short, and he has long since lost the well-groomed appearance he had when he first arrived on the street. I have even seen people disappear completely from the landscape. There was a woman whose decline I witnessed over several months. Then one day, poof, she was gone. We don’t tell ourselves that this person has gone somewhere else. We know very well that after a while, this person has probably passed away.

This photo isn’t just a photo of a homeless person completely drunk on the streets of Saint-Denis. It’s also a photo that sincerely documents what’s happening on the streets of my city.

That’s it. Not many photos for this month. I’ll try to do better in October!

All photos were taken with the Ricoh GR3 | Crop 35mm