Through these photographs, I pay tribute to my mother and therefore to all women.
My mother bought an apartment located between the sea and a pond.
After her divorce and the sale of the family home, she fulfilled her dream: getting her own little place by the sea.
I visited her in the summer of 2019. She was so radiant that I photographed her and her "paradise".
I photographed my mother’s body like the landscape.
My mother is in her element, she immerses herself in this place. The wind, the sun and the water envelop her, the sand, the salt and the rock cover her skin. The physical and emotional print of this environment perspires through her features.
At this time, my mother was 64 years old and she has three children. Her body is not the one we usually see in magazines. This portrait shows a woman’s body, its naked truthfulness, with its hollows and its flaws hidden and rectified in the mass media.
A fragility shared with the seaside landscape disfigured by the aesthetic operations of tourist industry.
Photographing my mother is a way to immortalize her and to keep every detail in memory. Her body is like an illustrated book: her hands remind me of my childhood, her tanned skin and her scars evoke the passing of Time.
On the other side, I photograph the absence, the emptiness revealing my apprehension of loss. Even in her seaside paradise, my mother will not live forever.
These pictures show that after a difficult sentimental and professional life, my mother finally found a way to happiness and freedom.
