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 Michel Maurel