"Last winter, a friend gave me some lithographic stones

These dies are heavy to handle, difficult to move

They are both dense and fragile

Their edges are lumpy and full of roughness, while their faces are rigorously smooth,

of a beautiful sandy shade

Their unadulterated brutality inspires me.

Installed on my stand, they become sculptures

It's obvious!

Placing these stones in front of the camera means using this impulse, this heightened acuity of the gaze: to be there, present, lucid.

Look

A harmony appears, like an ideal conjunction between what I see and what these stones evoke of buried stories.

And then there is a second time, far from the fraction of a second

A time that approaches that of the designer with the enhancement of the prints on the engraving paper

A time for reflection

I like this tension that exists between what I place in front of my lens and its transposition onto paper.

Photoengraving has become my preferred technique. It was while exploring ancient techniques that I discovered this process, which is similar to grain heliography. Niepce's first invention was a kind of photographic etching, a photomechanical means of obtaining a

intaglio print from a plate that has received the imprint of a cliché.

I use it as a reinterpretation of an old process, without mannerism or nostalgia: it is the texture caused by the passage through the press that interests me, this material effect that disturbs the photography.

The heavy, old press that is difficult to handle, the smell of the greasy ink that I spread on the mirror, the choice and preparation of the paper, I love this artisanal work with its rituals

Then comes the moment of highlights, the calmest, most meditative: the pleasure of creating images

Find slowness and always look

Look carefully"