I've spent 17 years photographing this island of the heart, a magical island that could be reduced to a billionaire's island where you eat caviar and swim in a pool of champagne. While that's possible, reducing a place to its population would reduce America to a big burger, France to a croissant, Italy to a cigarette. Far from the clichés and what the island's latest arrivals want to make of it, St Barthelemy is above all a rock forgotten for 5 centuries, in the middle of the water, and even if greed has spawned concrete monsters and architectural stupidity, the island remains a fantastic playground for a photographer like me, whose orientation is lacking, but getting lost is not really possible. I'm nostalgic for an era I never knew, an island that was already in motion when I arrived in 2005. Those who left said it was better before, while those who arrived wanted to live an Illian dream. Far from the collective hypocrisy, I've always appreciated the ambivalence between money and a simple life. Because even to have a simple life in St Barthelemy, you need money, it's a Robinson Crusoe adventure in gold, everything is more expensive than elsewhere if you want to live in comfort. However, there are things to do in Saint Barthelemy that are priceless and yet free: swim with the turtles, walk on deserted beaches, climb pathless hills, surf the wild waves, meet Paul Mac Cartney, sit down with a friend and enjoy an unforgettable experience.
As they say, if you want paradise, you have to pay the price. Unfortunately, what I knew is gone, as are those who came before me, and I find myself saying: "It was better before". That's the way the world is, a race to expand with no finish line, break it and start again, only better, we think... That's why I like to photograph in black and white, because it allows me to stop time, when the island will sink under the weight of concrete, when there will be no more wild beaches, when every hill will be marked and monitored by drones and cameras, when Tesla cars will appear in a territory that has never made the ecological turn to energy other than oil. Far from the negative image that my eyes portray, it's my heart that speaks, still finding hope in these photos taken years ago, a black and wild series!
