Japan does not travel through time like France does — primarily via objects, old stones, and museums. Instead, it does so via people. Across the country, countless festivals take place each year, far more than any one person could witness in a lifetime.

Each matsuri belongs to its place, and to those who show up to carry it forward one more time, for the hundredth or thousandth time. Some gather around religious rituals, others around neighborhood ties, or around skills passed from hand to hand.

What endures is not only a form, but a way of taking part. Often dissociating religious belief from the act of following custom, millions participate every year.

Each festival exists because people step into it. They dress, lift, wait, pull, dance, throw, act, bow - often after considerable training.

Roles are assumed without declaration. Incredible skills are simply presented. The body carries what words do not need to name. Through this shared effort, difference is preserved rather than dissolved.

My photographs were made over many years, through sustained attention to those who carry these rituals, year after year.

My work does not attempt to describe matsuris as a whole, nor to assign them a meaning beyond my reach. It stays close to gestures, postures, and moments of concentration — where continuity passes quietly from one body to another, across time.

At once near and peripheral, I can only bask in the splendor, fascinated - and invite you along.


Bio

French, born 1980 in Paris. Relocated to Japan in 2008. Four wonderful kids. Lives in Kyoto.


Ethics

I strive for honest images, in respect of those I photograph.

My work features only authentic, public, traditional events, captured as they unfold. While there is no posing, the participants are fully aware of the cameras. No elements are altered, added, or removed from the images. Aside from the 16:9 format, editing is kept at a strict minimum.

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