WESTLAND is my first depiction of a dream, a dream that has been with me since childhood. For as long as I can remember, American pop culture has fascinated me…my shelves are stacked with books by Eggleston and Shore, I am hooked on Breaking Bad, Stranger Things and ET, I idolize Lee Major and Farrah Fawcett, the rhythms of Curtis Mayfield punctuate my days…and when I close my eyes, this is the atmosphere that pervades my dreams, my hands on the wheel of an 80s ‘Big Block’, and the world, my world, is tinged with the hues of that one. It is visceral, as if I belonged there.

With experience, and after a career as an ‘ad-man’ that molded my world, I wanted to set the other world in images and give my particular take on the American dream. This volume fuses my own intimate vision, suffused with my culture, with a form of absolute truth that I wanted to convey unequivocally. I have striven to find new angles, to seek out the hidden details that nevertheless say so much, to respect the authenticity of the atmosphere and capture the visual effects and the colors.

When I showed my work to my friend Gildas Guyot, he was immediately taken with the idea of telling a story that would bring my photographs to life through a narrative inspired by the aesthetic of the places caught through my lens. With his usual talent, he immerses us in the heat, light and dust present in so many of my photographs. I am quietly proud that my work inspired him to put his sharp, acute pen to paper.

I hope that this collection will transport you to your own American dream…but what I bring to you through this book is neither a dream nor an illusion, but reality, as it is, and, I hope, as you have never seen it before.