Last shoots, Saint-Nazaire (44- France)

Outdoors day

I left Saint-Nazaire next week.

At the Transat, one of the bars where I spend time, I write and photograph this bright and changing light, sometimes surprising.

I like this idea that the waterfront, like any place, would be a space for ghosts. For shadows.

The impression of a presence, or an absence. A fleeting breath. A blur, then a certitude: something is ending and the stolen shadows will sustain my writing.

I was here so often. Rattan and black chair, friendly and suitable to mental dawdling as writing. Suitable to the dance of ideas. Just one look and everything becomes fiction. An extension of the real, but increased.

Indoors day

I was 8 when I discovered my first bar, held by the father of a classmate. Each day, we took collation sitting on stools at the end of zinc, eating long toast to turn the head of a kid. Except mine who was quite captivated by the atmosphere. It was a bar where people smoked a lot, talked so much and bet on racehorsesands, a mingle fauna I had not yet concept at this time. I only remember a beautiful man, always sitting alone and reading the newspaper every day. Beautiful and so mysterious. I remember loud voices, laughters and shoutings, an this intense and slow life that prevailed in this amazing place mesmerized the child that I was.

I've always been comfortable in the bars, like I was at home.

In a living and gushing house, full of comings and goings, full of sounds, intonations, differences, full of these others absolutly fascinating. A house where the real falters and wavers, where homework, pajamas, schedules, carrot soup are over even for a 8 years kid.

Suddenly, this house can host the worldwide.