A true French institution, the Fête de l'Humanité has left very little contemporary visual evidence. This series shows a side rarely accessible in the usual iconography of that popular gathering: from 2004 to 2008, between dog and wolf or in the dead of night, the maker concentrated on the décor of the stands and on the slogans that mark them.

“I also sometimes hang about in the empty aisles, when the crowds have ebbed away, the laughter has dispersed and the ashes cover the embers of the barbecues. All that remains on the site are the thousands of activists who have come from all over the country to run the stands. The accents of Languedoc or Berry echo those of the North or of Réunion in endless conversations under a starry sky. They all stand as they do in these pictures, feet on the ground and head in the sky — to mean, perhaps, that it is from this world that a new world will be invented.”