21_FRANCE

FRANCE SEEN FROM THE TOUR

I followed five Tour de France races between 2002 and 2014.Weeks of racing all over the country, thousands of kilometers, coming across millions of people and yet I never saw a single racer. I was there to discover a country beside the road. In front of the advertising caravan, I arrived at least one hour ahead of the peloton to photograph the spectators. The Tour de France is a popular celebration. The people celebrate summer, July 14th and the coming holidays. They celebrate a collective image that has its roots in the Middle Ages, the journeymen touring France after their apprenticeship, and in the Third Republic schoolbook “The Tour de France by two children”. Millions of French people reunite each year along the route of the race for a giant picnic in a kind of enormous national mass. They come seeking a lost innocence, an ideal country. Then they can pretend that nothing has changed, that everything is “as it was”. That is a perfect occasion to create a portrait of France today.