Arrière-pays
Arrière-pays roughly translates to “inland region¨ but literally translates to “back country”.
During the first two years of the pandemic, I was trapped in a city centre apartment. The early Covid soundtrack of ambulance sirens added to the claustrophobia and stress, and I lost interest in the idea of photographing strangers in city streets. I began to long for nature, simplicity and open spaces.
Once the lockdown restrictions lifted, I found myself drawn to the quiet inland region just beyond the busy coastline in the south east of France.
I started making regular trips to the small villages, forests, olive groves and vineyards in the area. Everything seemed slower and less complicated there. I walked in the hills, swam in the rivers and lakes and ate the fruit and vegetables that grew nearby.
Around this time, I experienced a series of personal losses. In 2020, my father and my brother-in-law died. In 2025, my mother died. These years were heavy and disorienting, and I found myself returning to this region not just for space and quiet but for something more essential. I sought out places that mirrored how I felt. The still landscapes and the faded villages carried a kind of melancholy that felt familiar.
The economic decline of the region is visible. Many of the villages and small towns feel half-asleep. Shops are shuttered. Paint peels. But there is also something steady and grounding in that place. The photographs I made during this time are soft and quiet. I think of them now as images of absence as much as presence. They are not direct portraits of grief, but they are shaped by it.
I have become more attuned to the details around me. The shape of trees in winter, the smell of warm stone, the sound of wind through dry grass. There is a deep satisfaction in the slow process of making these images. It is a return to something simpler, but also a way of sitting with what cannot be fixed or changed.
This is an ongoing body of work.
It began in 2020.