The conscious tourist sometimes feels a little out of place, an intruder in situations and contexts that are not entirely familiar to him. And all the famous places are so full of flocks hastily dragged hither and thither by the guide on duty, unwitting intruders, that one wishes for an immediate return of some pandemic.
As a tourist myself, but consciously and deliberately solitary and unorganised, I wanted to play with this concept of ‘intrusion’ in some images brought back from a trip to northern France. I have sometimes used this concept as a metaphor: the intrusion of the past into the present or vice versa, or that of a certain taste for the horrid in certain contexts; at other times in a direct way to highlight from some detail a sense of a break in rhythm, of the irruption of the absurd.
The clochard piggy bank. Rouen, Normandy, Rue de La Croix de Fer, August 5th 2024.Outsider, intruder. Rouen, Normandy, Eglise de Saint Maclou, Rue Damiette, August 5th 2024.Her and him. Rouen, Normandy, Place de la Cathedrale, August 5th 2024.Identity. Rouen, Normandy, Cathedrale de Rouen, Place de la Cathedrale, August 5th 2024.Super Mario and I: a certain taste for the horrid. Honfleur, Normandy, Rue du Poits, August 6th 2024.Overlaps: cyclists and D-Day. Arromanches-Les Bains, Normandy, Rue du Calvaire, August 7th 2024.The intruder in the parking lot. Arromanches-Les Bains, Normandy, Rue C. Laurent, August 7th 2024.Overlaps: waiting for the tide. Omaha Beach, Normandy, August 7th 2024.Monumentals. Le Mont Saint Michel, Normandy, August 8th 2024.Shadows and reflections at low tide. Le Mont Saint Michel, Normandy, August 8th 2024.
