Memories from Oblivion
Memories from Oblivion
Photos and text extracts attempt to bring to light how troubled I was when I came back to Ault-Onival, a former holiday resort, on the Channel border. Walking through the town, I came across familiar paths, streets leading down to the sea, the market in the High street, the marshy grounds past behind Onival, the eel track…. But I couldn’t find the house my grandmother used to rent, nor the café where my cousin and I used to spend away our boredom.
I couldn’t remember how many summers we’d spent there or how old we were. Fragments of Memories would come back in flashes, mingled with grey zones, blanks, oblivion.
I called this feeling Memories from Oblivion and went back there several times last year, taking pictures here and there : walls, houses, vacant lots, as if they were portraits, hoping to grasp what constantly eluded me, to put a name on this very personal quest.
Words were part of this photo project as much as pictures from the outset.