Losing My Head: when I see a person or a scene, a coming-together of volumes, my eye suddenly gets drawn in, I abandon myself completely to what I’m seeing, I lose all sense of my own reality, I get drunk on the scene which absorbs me, transforms me, transcends me, inundates me with pleasure, with the pleasure of life, which I try to record, if not to hold.

Every day, armed with his camera and usually driving his moped, François-Marie Banier leaves his home with no preconceived ideas in mind, simply the desire to discover what the world looks like on this particular day. Preferring the veracity of black and white, he focuses on street scenes in which the appearance and demeanour of faces and figures bear the marks of a particular life trajectory that has the power to touch our emotions — streetcleaners who look like mythological warriors, people out for a stroll, passers-by, couples, lonely figures — all have lived through experiences and trials that we can only guess at.