This is a photographic project on homeless people and drifters in Paris, France. The series consists of about 300 portraits of wayfarers from around the world that live on the streets of Paris. This work is not primarily about poverty or about a critical analysis of society, culture or capitalism. The concept of the vagabond, in short or long term, is a very old one and most often there was somehow a choice in their lives to live with nothing. It seams like the other extreme of a complete luxurious lifestyle some humans lead. And it is no great surprise to have the guess confirmed, that people on the streets are not ‘more’ unhappy than those taking a champagne bubble bath. My initial goal was to make something beautiful out of something ‘that is not’. These people on the streets of Paris, some of them living on the same spot for more than a decade, seemed to me like rough diamonds and if I succeed to make some Parisians say to themselves, when they eventually get to see these photographs “Why did I never talk to them?” then I think this work is good.
