Use your Illusions
First, for a while I wanted to do a work in which portraits and landscapes were melt. I spent six weeks in a town on the Atlantic coast, Royan, where I met every week pupils from a college. My purpose was to shown a different view on teenagers and on the world they are living in. Weeks after weeks I teached them Photography’s History with past and contemporary artists. Gradually we learned to know each other by talking freely about creation, history, the news, music…I did not want to ask them questions, I wanted to listen to them. Often Adult’s vision on teen is based on « clichés » like frivolous, sexuality, consumerist, carelessness…
© Régis Feugère
© Régis Feugère
© Régis Feugère
Some of them told me a lot about their lives, their point of view on the world the adult’s built and how it can be hard to make their mark in it. When I wasn’t with them I was making images on the town’s territory…You may be not know but Royan has been entirely destroyed at the end of The Second World War.
It’s a city rebuild with Modern architecture everywhere. It’s a small town on which you can find dozen of photography’s books! Not so simple when you have only six weeks to make a new work… So I let my paths ran outside the town centre…the landscapes I made are introspective, they are self-portraits in a way… At the opening the citizens were disappointed and without voice by seing their country in this way on the other hand teenagers’s understood perfectly my choice and the images.
all images and text © Régis Feugère