Town and Country are two municipalities out of the forty-two that make up the Pays Noyonnais, a territory that I explored during my residency1, on the eve of the arrival of the Seine-Nord Europe canal, a major development project which will not fail to profoundly disrupt the place.

In this context, I experienced a territory whose rural history, made up of mixed farming and livestock farming, once shaped diverse landscapes but whose contemporary motifs reflect the standardization of agricultural practices as well as that of lifestyles and living, very often modeled on the urban model.

As a photographer, I consider everyday landscapes (those that are familiar to us) both as witnesses and as products of a history of places. By observing their structures and their dynamics, I am interested in the way in which these landscapes tell us about the state of the relationships that men and women have with the land.

The landscapes of Noyonnais reflect the changes experienced by many rural areas and revealed by an agricultural world in crisis and a French society driven by nostalgia for what François Purseigle2 calls "a dreamed order of the countryside".

Do we live “in the countryside” when we live in Noyonnais today? This question crossed my mind throughout my residency, during discussions with elderly people who grew up there as well as by observing the children with whom I worked in various workshops. It is this seemingly simple question that my photographic series focuses on.