Steidlville

“Changing life: like a peal of thunder, 1950s France sprang to my mind. These memories returned to me one winter night in 2008 when Pascal Greggory was working on Nuit de Chien, a film directed by Werner Schroeter. For part of the night I watched work on the film set, and the next morning I recovered from the miracles I’d seen by taking a walk to the local market in Porto – with my camera in hand. I observed and photographed the men and women selling the produce they had grown on their land far from the city.

Here I discovered the same way of being, the same gentleness and graveness – these people were even wearing the same kind of clothes I knew from the French men and women of my childhood, people long since vanished from my life. Their bodies, so important to me, were once again before my eyes and there came a fresh scent from my past. While taking these photos, I felt close to these Portuguese people, as I felt at home with my Spanish companions near the Métro Pompe in Paris in the 1950s.

During the shooting of Nuit de Chien, I travelled from Portugal all the way back to the Paris of my childhood. If I had been able to take photographs as a baby in my cradle, you would see in them something similar to the infinite tenderness of these humble Portuguese farmers.” François-Marie Banier