Mezzanine

A few more climbs and here we are... As I photographed more and more stairs, I felt a certain weariness at not being able to count the steps anymore... And I think it's time to stop this race for more and more, preferring words because the most important thing is the message.

This series aims to show the massive halls of these palaces which have been abandoned for many years. The entrances are gigantic, yet the place is empty, but the beauty of these stairs and all these wrought iron railings make the charm of these spaces.

It offers a kind of humanity in a devastated place, because for me these masterpieces are the heart of these buildings. They represent the central element, the point of passage, of circulation exactly as in anatomy.

It's a kind of balance between everything and nothing, between chaos and harmony. I never got tired of going back and forth on those little steps or balconies on those days, carried away by the euphoria of such beauty, obsessed by the top and overlooking the void, but also called by the vertigo and the descent.

All photographs in this series are taken on Kodak Portra 4x5" film with a large field analogue camera.