Friday Face

One portrait a week. Every Friday for one year from May 2014 I released a writing and a
painting from someone I met in my new life in the United States. I started this project as
a diary, just for myself and my relatives in France. It was the best excuse to meet people
in this vast unfamiliar territory. I was feeling so lonely, so diminished also by my broken
English. I didn’t like many things – let’s talk about food, yoga pants, shopping malls…-
but almost every day one person would question this reluctance and make me more and
more curious about what makes America sometimes so great, sometimes not. So I dedicated
one day each week to the interview, the painting and the writing of somebody encountered in
my favorite coffee shop or recommended by my last model. From academic professor at
Harvard to cashier, from 8 to 80 years old, at the end, these 52 portraits result in a colorful
patchwork.
All together fashion my own Boston, and along the weeks, a portrait of the United States
begun to emerge, contradicting some preconceived ideas I had, pointing out my own
paradoxes.