No man’s land
Portfolio created: 1997
The places were all unknown to me. I arrived there a total stranger.
My mind kept going back to those legends that had enchanted me in the first place. I started my journeys without a clear idea in my mind.
I headed for Dover. Not only because the name itself attracted me as a frontier land, but also because it was the fastest way to the sea. It was cold, foggy and deserted. It was a border no doubt, a boundary. I could see the traces-scars of an unsettled situation. It seemed to me that there was an endless battle going on, right there, between man and nature. I could see the ruins of an ambitious human conquest: huge cement blocks, docks, and seawalls. Constructed landscapes which disappeared with the early tide in the morning mist and then reappeared taking back their usual place.
I always arrived there late, sometimes hours later, sometimes years after. I discovered what had taken place from tracking down the remaining spoils of the transient victory. Though who the victor was I could not tell.
I started searching for those traces, as if I was yet another collector of the coast like those wondering around with metal detectors.
Gradually, I stopped being just an observer. I became an active correspondent who sent passionate reports from a “front” which lay years away.
