Je n'irai plus voir la mer

A few years ago I started photographing the place where my partner was born. The series is interested in this territory, the people who live there, work there, those who leave it, and this dune as a border maintaining balance.

Yvette has lived there for 93 years.

She knows the sea well. She won’t go back. The landscape has changed.

At Yvette’s there are the plates in the dresser, the paintings hung on the wall, the photographs, the village, his time.

At the end of the road there is the dune. It is the one who maintains the decor, and the people who live there on both sides.

Porous, the sand allows men to pass through it. Secondary garden, it punctuates the life of workers and sedentary vacationers. Motorhomes and mobile homes can be set up there for a week or several seasons.

We see couples parking there, windows closed, wait and watch. The sea. In front.

But the water rises, the dune loses ground. We place fabric bags. Industrial rocks try to surround the work of time. This climate, we talk about it.

The memory slips away slowly.

We will have to leave soon.

I like this road which runs along the fields. I know that behind there is the sea, a snapshot that we will never see again.

So we barely close the curtains, we don’t take the time to clean, we don’t close, time will do the rest. We don’t know if it will hold again tomorrow, if we come back.

We look one last time.

Yvette remembers.

This image is enough for her.

She will no longer go to see the sea.