Urban writings
These photographs are taken from the photobook « Ecritures urbaines », which I produced in 2024. They focus on spontaneous writings found on city walls—specifically in Marseille. These writings take the form of graffiti, stencils, or collages, created with the sole purpose of conveying a message rather than pursuing aesthetic appeal. They reflect an ancient practice which, far from disappearing in the age of digital networks, is being revitalized, reclaiming the obvious role of graffiti as a medium of protest and free expression.).
Walls speak. They talk about politics and contemporary concerns (individual freedom, ecology, feminist struggles). About love, equality, violence. About local issues. About existential or egotistical issues. Whether they carry meaning or not, wall writings share one fundamental message: they exist to be read.
They are ephemeral. These exposed writings transform, deteriorate, and disappear because of weather conditions, readers’ reactions, competition from other graphic productions in the urban landscape, or the anti-graffiti efforts of public authorities.
Anonymous and illegal, these writings embody a form of resistance, a free and creative expression within public space. They challenge the established order and question the limits of freedom of expression.
The texts woven into the walls form a secret book displayed in plain sight; it is the city writing itself. And the walls, as the medium of these writings, become the meeting points of action and protest. Wall writings reveal, in a way that is both authentic and in tune with contemporary reality, the spirit of the city and, more broadly, the essence of the times.
To photograph these wall writings as statements and fleeting traces, I chose a frontal, geometric, relatively tight framing, without human presence, except the one metaphorized through writing. The absence of perspective and the flat compositions give the walls the value of an inscription and the quality of a palimpsest in which successive layers can be deciphered.
