“I think I’m around 6 years old in this photo, taken in the south of France, on the port of La Londe-les-Maures, where I grew up. I wear the fashionable plastic collar at the time. My hair is blond, my skin tanned: it must be the holidays… At that time, I was training, I was learning to dance and I was regarding to start playing the piano. My teacher, Catherine, was a single mother with four children. I loved going to her place, at the HLM Les Palmiers. Still, lots of kids were running around and playing, it was lively, happy. Not so long following, I will start the theater, try auditions.
“In this image, it is this tender and pretty, sweet and precious period, in which adult life had not yet begun, that I glimpse. »
At home, I spent a lot of time with my sister who is two years older than me. But, in general, everything that happened outside the house made me happy. When I was not in La Londe-les-Maures in the summer, I went to summer camp. It was a ritual moment that I had been waiting for. I remember it as a great relief. Images of pure entertainment come back to me, light and free: large fields, treasure hunts, bivouacs. To be far away, in a place entirely dedicated to children… I loved it. However, I was more of the team that tends to fall in love with instructors!
In this image, it is this tender and pretty, sweet and precious period, in which adult life had not yet begun, that I glimpse. This parenthesis in which I had no constraints, where I was not politicized, where all that concerned me was my home and my class. I became an adult faster than people my age, at 16, when I started to be exposed [grâce à l’émission « Nouvelle Star », de M6, en 2009]. I left to settle in Paris like a grown-up, in a comfortable life, free and proud to be independent.
I have not returned to La Londe-les-Maures since. I try to go there when I can, especially when I attend the fashion and photography festival in Hyères. A detour and I find the port, the landmarks. It’s strange how we remain attached to specific places, to streets, to a smell.
When I realized that I won’t be there as much as before, I wrote [en 2014] a song called Miramar, from the name of the beach next to the port. “I remember how I love Miramar/Even if she’s waiting for me/I’ll arrive too late…“It has been my way of greeting childhood, the enveloping tranquility of childhood, and of honoring and saying goodbye to this so important place that has witnessed it. »
Walking Lorca 1936, theatrical concert on texts by Federico Garcia Lorca, directed by Daniel San Pedro, at the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord, in Paris, until February 12, and on tour.
The Taste of M
