If you had togo to a desert island,
If you had to go on an intergalactic journey,
What are the ten items from your previous life, you would take with you?
It’s no longer a game, when you go to an EHPAD (Institution for eldrly people),
You go from an apartment, from a house to a room,
Your space is shrinking, you can’t take everything with you,
It’s necessary to choose.
So I went to interview residents in different EHPADs,
To find out what they had kept as memories of their lives before
I photographed their hands holding or sometimes caressing this object.
We have a bit of a Prévert-style inventory, photos of loved ones of course,
Objects that may seem trivial, surprising objects,
Moving objects, all have a story, a meaning for the person.
And then right in the middle, a hand that seems empty
But it is not completely,
There is the alliance, the only witness to the past.
Jacques Villière