In 2011, without meaning to, I came across a photo by Richard Petit.
It was a photo like 2 by 3 meters, a photo of a mountain with a lot of snow but also rock, incredibly precise, you could see details of rock, hollows, shadows, and hyperlight in the white of the snow.
I didn't know Richard.
When I met him a few years later, I saw him, him in real life, with his Apache look, and I understood: he was the mountain, so impressive, luminous, with his incredible bursts of laughter. He had such a mystical, spiritual dimension, a mountain like all mountains, with its faults, its crevasses, its worries and its grandeur. He was so intimidating. He came back from the depths of the world beyond the mountains so far away, those that seem so inaccessible to me. Such a man facing the sea, facing the city, what is it doing in this kind of residence?
It questions itself, it observes itself, him, his character, his life as a photographer. The mountain is no longer there to grab him, so he grabs himself. Dear Richard, I would like to thank you from the bottom of my heart for having accepted this questioning, never simple, for having played the game with so much sincerity.
It is an honor to welcome you.

Michaël Serfaty

organiser of 2.1.7 residence