This photographic series was created in the spring of 2025 as part of a territorial residency led by the association Traverse, in the Hautes-Pyrénées region. I spent two months in Bagnères-de-Bigorre meeting teenagers and young adults living in the area. Some were born there, others arrived later — for their studies, for the mountains, for the Adour river that pulses like a heartbeat, or to find refuge. This project is a portrait of this rural, mountainous region through the eyes of the young people who inhabit it. I explore how they navigate these spaces — natural, public, and private — and how they make them their own.

 

The images were taken with a large format 4x5 view camera. I was asking myself questions, in terms of ethics of representation, about how to photograph these adolescents whom I did not know — I didn’t want to interpret or project my impressions of their lives into the images. So the photographs were made in collaboration with these young people; they are the result of conversations about their relationship to space, to images, and to others. These were utopian discussions that touched on ideas of belonging, nesting, and taking flight. From these initial reflections, each participant imagined their own portrait by inventing a visual language — a staged scene, a landscape, an object. For some, the aim was for me to document their everyday life, their reality; for others, it was about creating a scene that reflected who they aspired to be — a desire, a fiction.

 

What these individuals share is their age and their presence here, but their paths and desires are diverse. This photographic research explores the suspended time of adolescence: an intimate in-between space that holds both stillness and momentum. It is an exploration of these fragile yet powerful moments — a tribute to the inner vitality of teenagers and young adults, to their contained impatience, to their fire. Thanks to their generosity, I was happy to discover the whole world in their eyes.