En Suspens

This large format photographic series is a portrait of teenagers in rural France, made in collaboration with them, through discussions and imagination. This research explores the suspended time of adolescence.

This series was created in the spring of 2025, in the Hautes-Pyrénées region in France, and focuses on teenagers and their relationship with the rural territory they inhabit. This photographic research explores the suspended time of adolescence: an intimate space that exists in the in-between, where we hold both waiting, anticipation and desire. It is an exploration of those fragile yet powerful moments—a tribute to the inner vitality of teenagers and young adults, to their contained impatience, to their ardor.

I spent several months in Bagnères-de-Bigorre meeting teenagers and young adults living in the area. Some were born there, others arrived later – for their studies, for the mountains, for the Adour river that pulses like a heartbeat, or to seek refuge. This project is a portrait of this rural, mountainous territory through the eyes of the young people who live there. I explore how they navigate these spaces – natural, public, private – and ways in which  they make them their own.

I myself grew up in a small rural community, and I’m now thinking about the way we moved through those places as teenagers. We occupied spaces that weren’t really meant to be occupied: doorsteps, stairways, we parked our cars at the edge of a field, hung out in parking lots. I realize now that these were spaces between spaces – liminal, transitional – just like that period of life. Teenagers have an entirely different geography of the place they live in, always seeking a place of their own, a place to meet, to spend time, somewhere they will not be disturbed. It is a way of reclaiming this territory.

 As I started this project, I was asking myself questions, in terms of ethics of representation, about how to photograph these teenagers I didn’t know. I didn’t want to interpret or project my own impressions of their lives into the images. When it comes to portraiture, especially of young people, the methods used by the photographer to not have an overpowering gaze are particularly important. The solution here was for the photographs to be taken in collaboration with the young participants. The images are the result of multiple conversations about their relationship to space, to imagery, and to other people. These were discussions based on utopia, touching on ideas of belonging, of nesting, and of leaving. From these initial reflections, each participant imagined their own portrait by inventing a visual language – a staged image, a landscape, an object. For some, it meant documenting their daily lives and reality; for others, it involved creating a scene that expressed who they aspire to be – a desire, a fiction. The portraits are often presented as diptychs and accompanied by text. They were taken using a large-format 4x5 view camera.

 What these individuals have in common is their age and presence on this territory, but their life stories and desires are diverse. I met them through the local high school, through shelters for young migrants, through a government organization supporting teenagers who quit school, or via other teenagers. Thanks to their generosity, I was fortunate to discover the entire world through their eyes.

 If selected for this award, I would like to continue developing this research in various rural regions across France. I thought it would be a one-time one-place series, but the conversations with these teenagers were so rich, their creativity, honesty and vulnerability were so inspiring, that I want to build on this project and meet and photographs teenagers in other places.