For just over twenty years I worked as a commercial photographer in London, specialising in advertising and design work. In 2013 I gave up my photography career to work in the film and TV industry; I now work as a property master within the art department of major film and television productions.
Over the last four years I have been travelling to France between film assignments to photograph rural towns and villages. I shoot exclusively on large-format colour negative film, using my Sinar F field camera.
'Vive Vide' is the culmination of this work, mostly photographed in the French departement of Deux-Sevres. 'Vive Vide' is a play on words - 'vive' usually means 'long live', but can also mean 'lively' and 'vide' can mean both 'empty' or 'emptiness'.
This part of France is very sparsely populated and you can drive through three or four small villages, one after the other, without seeing a single person. There are also lots of abandoned buildings and open spaces in this area, many left empty and untouched for years.
Rather than getting up close and documenting the lives of people in these places, I want the viewer to imagine lives lived behind the closed doors and empty streets.
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