“May 11, 2020. France is opening again, unaware that the country will go back into lockdown. In Paris, the store shutters roll up, the streets come alive. And yet, in gatherings, discussions, and the media, the idea that ” life is elsewhere ” keeps coming up. Elsewhere, in the country, real estate booms on houses with gardens, there is the desire to reconnect with nature, working from home with one’ s feet in the grass.

I hear these injunctions and the one, even more prevalent as it contains all the others, of the “retour à la source” (in english, ” a return to the roots “). I decide to take it literally. I am a Parisian. If I have a source, it is the Seine, this river so familiar that it merges with our streets, the same colour, the same familiar vision that we no longer notice. I decide to return to my source.

I learn that it is in a town called Source-Seine, 260 km south-east of the capital. Of course, I hear “source saine”, as in “healthy spring” – it’s so good, they must have done it on purpose. To get there, one crosses these newly conquered lands, which make the pavilion possible: the Seine-et-Marne, the Marne, the Aube, the Côte d’Or… the further you go, the more enticing the names sound.                             

I want to follow this path, from Paris to the source. To photograph this nature mixed with urban which makes us dream suddenly. To make one of these trips to the vicinity to which the “plan of support to the tourist sector” incites us. To meet the inhabitants of the riverbanks, those who have come, or stayed, for the Seine, it is said that its presence soothes. With the river as a thread, to leave as an explorer of the lands of garden houses, of this desire born from the time spent in lockdown, of this Eldorado of the world after… To leave, but above all to seek nothing. " Frédéric Stucin

“We are the discreet heroes of the narratives we dream. Some evenings, when we run faster and more headlong than usual, we may even believe we are heroes in real life. So we invent exploits in our own image, we swim a little too far in the shadowy water, we dance on a shifting roof, we create splendid spectres that fade away at sunrise.”
Extract from the preface by Marie Ndiaye

Frédéric Stucin is a photographer. Specialized in portraits of personalities or anonymous people, especially for the press, where he also publishes reports, he leads in parallel a personal practice. His publications, Endorphine (éditions Filigranes, 2021), Only Bleeding (éditions du Bec en l’air, 2019), and Trois étoiles (catalog of the Musée Nicéphore Niépce exhibition, 2016) closely combine the exploration of reality and the imaginary. In 2020, his series “Le Décor”, made in Paris during the confinement was promoted to the Eurazeo prize. His photographs have been the subject of several exhibitions, most recently at the Villa Perochon in Niort, the Portrait(s) festival in Vichy, and the Hangar Photo Art Center in Brussels.

Marie NDiaye was born in Pithiviers on June 4, 1967 to a father with Senegalese roots and a French mother. She received the Prix Femina in 2001 for her novel Rosie Carpe and the Prix Goncourt in 2009 for Trois femmes puissantes. She is one of only two living French authors in the repertoire of the Comédie Française with her play Papa doit manger. In 2009, she participated in the writing of the screenplay for Claire Denis’ film, White Material. In 2020, she was awarded the Marguerite-Yourcenar prize for the whole of her work.