Documentary filmmaker, I have traveled extensively and crossed into worlds far removed from my own. I was able to see without being seen, shielded by the camera, spying on the lives of others and navigating the heart of their intimacy. Along the way, I began taking photographs, first by borrowing my wife’s film camera, an Olympus OM-1 from 1981. The element of chance and the surrender demanded by such an old camera are unmatched and part of the thrill. That was in 2010, and I was immediately struck by the poetic strengh and evocative power that a single image can sometimes convey, I, whose job is on the contrary to produce them by thousands. At first sporadic, the practice gradually turned into an obsession, and I inevitably ended up succumbing to the frenzy of collecting (Leica, Nikon, Hasselblad, Pentax, etc.), swearing hand on heart that the next camera I picked up would be the last. Until the next one.

This photographic approach, self-taught and intuitive, is a counterpoint to my documentary work, with greater agility, autonomy, and immediacy: photographing what I cannot film. For years, I accumulated cameras, memories and images—thousands of photos posted surreptitiously on Instagram, then ending up in the bowels of poorly labelled hard drives, often misplaced.

Today, so that all this has not been in vain, I want these pictures to exist.

And this is where it happens…