Olivier Tournaire

I have always loved photography. I started young, on film, developing black-and-white prints in trays in the cellar. Then one day a whole series vanished: I had loaded my (wonderful) Tri-X 400 badly, and the advance lever never moved the film. Once I found out, I packed everything away and did not touch a camera for many years.

Years later I came back to it and switched to digital with a Canon EOS 550D. Short on time and desire, I made nothing memorable: a few holiday snaps, a few portraits. Back then I had somewhat lost the taste for it. It felt too easy, too fast, and the results never looked the way I saw things; I could not "capture the moment". For my 40th birthday I decided to start again and took a (big) leap into the past: a Leica M4, well equipped with lenses, including a beautiful wide-angle shift lens. I did not take many pictures with it, but it was always on my mind and made me want to go out again, just to take photographs. The pleasure was back. In fact, that pleasure does not come from the camera or the lenses; it comes from what lies on the other side of the lens. That is where it clicked.

Summer 2020, in the middle of Covid. For years I had walked past Le Signal, a building I had seen inhabited, evacuated and em...