“From Quebec , I was praised the wide open spaces, wild nature, lakes and forests which make Europeans dream and fantasize in search of these liberating immensities. But what caught my eye were these little roadside buildings, inevitable at the entrance or in the center of villages, isolated in ill-fitting and disproportionate spaces. Their number intrigued me as much as their shapes moved me: wooden houses, recycled buses, patched up planes, exhausted vehicles, diverted from their primary use for a new life of work. Hatched at the first signs of heat, they inevitably closed when the slightest frost approached.
I later learned that they were called "fried potato stands", cousins ​​of the "chip shacks" of northern France and Europe, less sophisticated than the American "Diner", but very specific to the culture and imagination of Quebecers.
Photographing these “stands” made me discover a social phenomenon, very specific to Quebec, truly anchored in the lives of Quebecers. And as someone will tell me during my meetings: "There isn't a Quebecker who doesn't have a potato stand in his heart!" To each their own stand and their best potato, their best poutine, their best hot dog or their best pogo! But above all, I met there a small fragment of magnificent humanity, simple, lucid, full of humor, which, speaking to us about itself, spoke to us of all humanity. The words gleaned during my shootings modified my project and seemed to me as essential as the images. It was the very end of the 1970s. ”