Angèle and the new world

Summer 2014, Trudeau airport, Montreal : I took the first picture of what would later become this series. Angèle was 4, and that was the first time she'd left her daily life, our tiny flat in Paris...

Angèle is a little girl. She is standing right in the middle of every picture. By the Saint Laurent river on an avenue somewhere in Brooklyn, a pontoon on Lake Maggiore or in Stockholm Harbour, Angèle is always alone. But she's fearless. Angèle has got that fragile confidence of beloved children. The pictures unfold like a journey and you are drawn to the lovely little face that urges you to take a look at the new world around her – majestic buidings, wide open spaces along with overfilled shelves in a supermarket or messy swimming pool lockers. The sceneries get different. Only her staring eyes remain the same. What is she thinking about ? Angèle is just a little girl in a grown up world, a world so big it seems to have wrapped her in. Grabbing wax mannequins her size, hiding behind some candy floss, flying off on a swing : does she even know she will grow up one day ? Maybe this is what Thibaut Derien asked himself when taking pictures of his daughter on family trips for several years. Fatherhood has been his own new world and he seems deeply moved about it, striving to hold childhood back when it isn't over yet but will so soon be.