This post is also available in: French

The Blanches Terres is a deserted locality of a formerly agricultural and industrial Lorraine. A few houses lost in a countryside whose charm escapes those who only pass by. A rural territory, isolated and on the margin, as everywhere in France, with a prosperous past and little promise for the future. Michelle, 84, has lived there forever, as a ”rooted” one. Widowed for twenty years, she fights against isolation through almost daily relations with her rare neighbors, most of them are her cousins, first ​​or distant ones.

Anxious to preserve and transmit the memory of the Blanches Terres, Michelle has filled up dozens of photo albums throughout her life. But for the moment, she plans, with lucidity and resignation, the imminent disappearance of all traces of these ”tiny lives” in these Blanches Terres.

A film director, Michelle’s granddaughter, came to the Blanches Terres to suggest Michelle and ”the cousins” to be at the heart of her new photographic work and, moreover, to become actors of her next film. The latter were flabbergasted, wondering what was so interesting for others to be interested in them and then Michelle added: ”When you get old, you get ugly. So there are some who no longer want to be photographed.”

She and her loved ones are singularly revealed in this exhibition which tells of old age and which pays homage to the community of the Blanches Terres.

What does it mean to be photographed at over 80 years of age, is it a way to leave a trace, the synthesis of an existence? How do you see yourself, how do you accept your image at these advanced ages?