From my introduction to a show of Vraies Semblances in 1999, at the Dina Vierny gallery in Paris.
There are faces – women’s faces – that my eyes love to linger on, sometimes in spite of myself and for longer than is really polite. I’m sure that this happens to other people as well. In my case, professional habit may serve as an excuse – except that the faces that attract me are rarely like the ones that I have to photograph for fashion magazines. In deciding to portray these women, I was searching, of course, for decisive moments: a person’s image is fluid and reshapes itself in the viewfinder, until the fraction of a second in which it seems to coincide with something I have been waiting for, that will be like a synthesis of all my stolen glances, or like an appearance in which I believe, perhaps presumptuously, to recognize the very essence of a person. The other moment of truth is when this person is confronted with her portrait. I would like her to feel as if she were looking in a mirror, but also to wonder about herself and, in the best case scenario, to accept what she sees and to tell herself: ‘yes, it’s definitely me, I don’t mind people seeing me that way'.