POLYNESIA

"Even her fears make her laugh! Janine is a festival. Her house on the lagoon is a festival. Janine was a midwife before Sylvain seduced her with his guitar and singing while she was on night duty. And Janine, in turn, seduced Sylvain – so much so that the big reporter-adventurer ended up setting down his bags on the island. He would no longer photograph anything other than the beauty of the vahines who, still today, inspire the advertising brochures distributed by the pimps of exoticism.

Janine was his muse. When I visited, she organized a party. A party of the kind that was no longer seen. Lunch stretched out long into the night in front of the lagoon. It was the picture of another era, loyal to the shots taken by her adored husband. A throwback to the time before the 'bomb', before a jumble of religious excess built up to the point of overwhelming God Himself, though people have now got used to it. The time before misery replaced a poverty that didn’t even go by a name."

Extract from Zoé Zoé, Femmes du mondes, 2007, Éditions Gallimard