I've been on DA since 2001... During this time, I had great time but I think that the nowaday DA is much more different than the one I discovered 3 years ago.
Maybe DA is victim of its success...but hey, how can you emerge as an artist when there's about 10 000 000 deviations to see or to read ???
The devwatch has this weakness that there's so many talented artists on DA that it goes huge... and finally you watch nothing anymore. This is especially true when you're not a subscriber.
The continual pressure put on DA artist to subsribe has something annoying... Thought DA was a free place for creative people to express themselves by art mediums.
It seems to me that DA has become someting I don't recognize me in anymore.
Many people come to my page and ask why I don't have much more hits. I really don't know. Maybe that too much art kills artists. But I think that a new member in 2004 will hardly emerge from the whole bunch of members...
Maybe that living in France is an obstacle because the hours of my submissions appear to be the moment where DA is less frequented...
Maybe that my work is crap...
Anyway, for all those reasons, I decided to quit defenitively DA.
Thanks for all the people that followed my work : Raun, Fidget and Redux especially.
May be this journal won't be read at all !

End of transmission.

... I use to feel far from what I really want to do. Since I discovered photography, I wonder how I could live from it !
Anyway, I realised, as I am close to an exhibition of my photos, that I can't dissociate music from the pics. My photos are full of Red House Painters, Idaho, Damon & Naomi, Spain... I think that the first day of the exhibition, I will put the stereo on with all the songs that helped me to shoot : "Alive again", "Jump up", "Glass bottom", "To be the one", Casa mia" from Idaho, "Three legged cat", "Mistress", "Katy song", "Down through", " Song for a blue guitar" from Red House Painters and finally "Make your body move" and "Nobody has to know" from Spain. I forget many, I'm sure, and some others will come to my mind in the next days, but I think this is the best way for people to immerge into my photographic world...

I can see that I hit my 270th deviation. My work has evolved, indeed. And I wonder when my inspiration vanishes. I'm scared of that. My I still find new places to shoot, new ways to explore colour or composition. And up to now, it's working (oh... I guess so)

To all, happy new year !

It's strange to see how november looks like every other november. Especially this year. The weather, the shape of the clouds, the lightning... everything reminds me of november 2001.

Even if by now my life is quite happy, it's impossible to forget just a single things of these bad days.

I had no car, no furnitures, no money, I was alone and lonely. I used to take drugs and to drink too much. I used to mix up Lithium, Xanax, Jack Daniels, cocaine and weed.

I used to dance whole night long, drunk and/or stoned, argue, fight... Well, my life was a bit disturbed. I used to walk on bridges in the early morning waiting for the sun, hoping that the light of a new day would wash me, would clean my brain and my blood.

I had no haste in destroying my being. This was a slow process. The rythm was given by the substances.

I went to Paris some day. I can't even remember what I did there. I took photos, ate twice within an hour. Came back, in themist of my smoked brain. I didn't stop smoking weed for three days. In Paris, I just remeber that I stood in a cafe for hours, near Notre-Dame, watchnig the crowd passing by like a colored river.

In november 2001, I was feeling cold, sad, tortured, twisted. I slept with several women. I don't really remember their face. When you're a junky, every body looks exactly the same as any other one. You feel like a satellite, moving in random ways.

The rock was moving into the alcohol. I decided, suddenly, to travel to Cairo. Bought the airplane ticket, and a few days after, I was in the Carton Hotel, not far from Talaat-Harb Street.

It was february, and the air-conditionned system was out of order, but it wasn't important. I left a near zero weather to get a 26°c city. Cairo, from my window, was spreading like an octopuss, throwing his tentacles in every direction.

I didn't know why I came in this noisy and polluted metropolis, but I needed to be there. Troubles were behind me. Beside the hotel, there was a fruit market, seemed to be there 24 hours a day.

I went to a chicha cafe and took some tea and an apple chicha. Discussed with Said, took photos of him, holding in a dangerous way more full glasses on his plate than I ever saw before.

Within one day, I wanted to stay. I wanted to forget everything. I wanted to merge in the pavement, in this smell, so specific that if you close your eyes, you know where you are.

Cairo was catching me, to never release me. I walked above the Nile, on the 6th october bridge, leading me to Zamalek. The Nile was like an enormous and moving highway. Far away, I could see the city disappearing in the smog. I could hardly see the bridge to Ramses. The Semiramis Hotel was reflecting in the water.

People everywhere... Life in every corner... crowded streets... but I was fine. I felt good like I ever felt since a long time. Took a taxi to Gizah, and went to Ahmad house, upon the roof, to eat chiken and discuss. At a short distance, the Pyramids and the Sphinx were there, silent and huge. In Gizah, on this roof, smoking chicha, in the evening sunlight, I felt the block getting relaxed after a hot day. Ahmad was talking to me and... well... he became a friend.

I want to get back to Cairo.