Seven Floors

39 contact sheets.

Like any photographer, I asked myself how to tell the story of the health management crisis that was coming. In order to convey the generalized anguish on a population scale, I decided that day after day I would metaphorically reconstruct the buildings where we were confined, by photographing the floors of mine.

What is going on behind those doors? Why does the atmosphere get heavier as the floors go up and as time goes by ? The accumulation and repetition of the same pattern (like a virus) with slight variations evokes an oppressive routine whose outcome is unknown.

I used a half-format plastic camera that I had already had to repair once, a flash that was older than me (I was born in 1987) and film: some black and white negatives, black and white positives, kodachromes and colour reversals. I then developed everything in my bathroom into a negative for the black and white print. I diluted the developer as much as possible in order to ration my resources. Each film corresponds to two days of work.

The use of obsolete equipment and consumables proved to be an appropriate choice. Indeed, the more time passed, the worse the situation became, the clearer the lack of management became, the more my equipment disintegrated and the less identifiable the subject of each photograph became. Until the camera, pushed to its limits, gave up on the 39th day of confinement.

Only the memory of the building remains, like an empty shell.