Franchement

Through sustained presence in a medium-sized European city, “Franchement” captures everyday social and personal life before it is normalized. A non-linear visual approach intercepts the process before it becomes visually settled.

His wife has a lovely face, and they both have green eyes. They met on a chat for people with physical challenges. He had a bad accident. He used to play piano well. Now it’s harder. He turns on the TV and cues his music, so the vacation photos roll by too. He’s a good photographer. Next to the couch, on the little coffee table, everything’s set for a snack, crackers, salami, a French cheese. After a long while, he turns off the TV, takes a drag on his cigarette, blows the smoke hard through his nose, like a bull.

“Franchement” is a project developed through sustained presence in Amiens, a medium-sized European city where daily routines and codified formalities absorb what deviates from predictability. The work photographs portraits, interiors, urban scenes, and details before social normalization completes.

Images emerge from interactions with people living different conditions of work, migration, age, and belonging, encountered through relationships formed over time as well as unscheduled situations. These are lives that intersect within the same urban spaces, shaped by proximity.

Building relationships over time provided access to moments where social frictions surface alongside forms of presence that resist containment. A non-linear visual approach, including sequencing and diptych pairings that may include field notes, operates against this normalizing force. Disparate elements coexist without hierarchy, their juxtaposition preventing the flow that smooths difference into routine.

“Franchement” sets a direction for our work in specific local contexts where everyday life in contemporary Europe functions not through crisis but through the quiet management of difference that photography can make raw and visible again.