Santiago

In 2002, I left Paris to walk to Santiago de Compostella, an ancient pilgrimage road, crossing France to Galicia in Spain. At that time, I felt the urge to explore myself. Unable to make a picture for a few months, I welcomed the road and my thirst into my face, my changes, and my feelings. The ritual was simple. Each time I was thirsty, I made a spontaneous self-portrait, without posing, with a small B&W camera. Back in Paris, I spent two weeks in the lab and was overwhelmed by the “road” seen on my face: pain, relief, sadness, life, death, anguish, softness, rigidity, tiredness, the joy of this infinite freedom of nothing and the beauty of the world, the fear which oozes, the physical pain, the relief of leaving fear behind, the sweat of the anguish, rest... It is ugly, it is splendid. —Marie Docher