Walked Territories - Urban Surfaces  

For this trilogy I chose to photograph Nice without looking at its buildings, its sea or its skyline.
Every photograph was made while walking, camera pointed straight down at the ground. Seen from above, at ninety degrees, the city slowly revealed another landscape, one built out of asphalt, painted lines, worn pavement, pebbles.
The three series explore different surfaces. Sol follows the streets of the city centre, where years of repairs, traffic and everyday wear have left a dense web of marks. Mue moves to the Promenade des Anglais, where the ground keeps record of walkers, cyclists and the changing light off the sea. Fresque turns to the pebble beaches, where stones arranged only by waves and time form shifting compositions that often look like abstract drawings.
These photographs are less about the city itself than about what usually slips past our attention. Looking down while walking turned familiar places into new territory, where every surface carries the traces of time and repeated passage.

Developed within the Unclearpicture collaboration with writer Michaël Koswil

Overhead view of worn pavement marked by large white numerals and intersecting seams.
Blue-toned asphalt with a white triangular marking and a small circular sign fragment.
A yellow leaf lies on rough dark pavement, creating a bright organic shape in the street surface.
Turquoise and white painted lines overlap on weathered pavement in an abstract urban composition.
White numerals cross a green-grey pavement surface, their edges softened by repeated passage.
A narrow crack splits the pavement while small weeds emerge from the damaged surface.
A square opening in the pavement frames a distant glimpse of the landscape beyond.
A blue patterned metal surface fills the frame with repeating circles and worn edges.
Close-up of a blue drainage grate and its dense geometric pattern.
Branching cracks spread across pale pavement like a network of fine lines.
Red and white painted pavement forms a sharp diagonal composition of colour and texture.
A small dark opening interrupts a pink painted surface scattered with pale fragments.
A thin strip of grass grows through a long crack in dark asphalt.
A pale octagonal paving stone sits within a field of green-grey blocks.
Close-up of a weathered wooden surface with a small metal latch and deep vertical grain.
Two contrasting pavement surfaces meet along a narrow broken seam.
A drainage grate is partly covered by weeds and surrounded by worn concrete.
Pebbles and fragments form a dense vertical field of grey and beige textures.
Circular metal cover embedded in cracked pavement, seen from directly above.
A branching fissure travels across a brown-grey street surface.
Cracked pavement radiates around a small circular marker embedded in the ground.
Rippling grooves and eroded marks create a skin-like pattern in the pavement.
Fine intersecting lines cross a pale urban surface in an abstract geometry.
Green growth follows a long crack through a pink and violet pavement surface.
Dry cracks form a delicate network across a warm beige ground.
Clusters of rounded marks gather on a pinkish pavement surface like small stones or fossils.
Geometric traces and square outlines appear within a cracked earthen pavement.
Parallel ridges run across a weathered tan surface, resembling layered sediment.
Two dark circular openings puncture a textured brown ground.
Faded paint and rough aggregate combine into an abstract fragment of the street.
A narrow seam separates two contrasting slabs of worn urban pavement.
Small stones, cracks and stains create a dense archaeological pattern on the ground.
An irregular patch of colour interrupts a grey surface marked by traffic and weather.
Overhead study of eroded paving whose lines and textures resemble a drawn map.
Close-up of a weathered city surface where fracture, repair and repeated passage remain visible.
Using Format