We are now in February 2025, marking exactly 10 years since I started photography. To celebrate this anniversary, I’ve decided to reflect on this decade of adventures through a series of articles that will be published throughout the month on my blog.
Although I started photography in 2015, it was in 2017 that I made the decision to turn it into my main profession. This third article looks back at the COVID years.
In Extremis
In the previous part, I talked about my gallery experience, which came to an end in late 2019. Now, we arrive in 2020. That year, driven by a strong desire to travel, I had planned several destinations: St. Petersburg, Venice, and Turkey.
Ultimately, fate decided, and Venice became my first destination of the year. In March 2020, I flew to Italy. If you remember, March 2020 marks the arrival of COVID in Europe. In Italy, several villages in the north were already under lockdown, considered hotspots of the virus. Travel bookings for Venice plummeted, and it was in this context that I arrived in the City of Doges.
I wandered through a nearly deserted Venice, a spectacle both fascinating and surreal. A few days after my arrival, the press announced early in the morning that northern Italy would be completely locked down for two weeks. Without hesitation, just as I had planned to photograph the islands of Murano and Burano, I quickly packed my belongings, left my accommodation in haste, and took advantage of the momentary uncertainty to catch what would be the last flight to Paris.
Upon my arrival, I learned that the lockdown had been extended to all of Italy and would ultimately last six weeks. From this trip, I brought back not only this anecdote but also a series of unique images capturing a Venice frozen in an eerie silence. You can see the photos here.
COVID
Deprived of street photography and travel, the COVID period became, for me, a time of photographic experimentation—one that, in the end, left behind very few traces.
The Orangerie du Sénat
In 2021, after my application was selected, I had the honor of being invited to exhibit my work at the Orangerie du Sénat for two weeks. It was during this event that I presented the *Escapades* series for the first time. For the occasion, I exhibited 50 photographs taken from around the world, displayed along a 15-meter-long visual timeline.
You can see in the image above: on the left, photos taken in Venice, and on the right, photos taken in the Faroe Islands.
And if you’d like to learn more about Escapades, click here.
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