How Do You See

2 July 2026

Text by Yann Courté · @memoire.courte on Instagram
Photographs by Yann Courté & Étienne Pons

A few weeks ago I spent a day in Sète, walking the Itinérances Foto festival route with Étienne Pons. Étienne and I have known each other for a long time, and have photographed together before, many times.

We started at the Chapelle du Quartier Haut, where Dolorès Marat and Ed Alcock were showing. Then out into the streets, through the Cimetière Marin, into the Musée Paul Valéry, back down toward the water, the Halles covered market for lunch, the CRAC contemporary art centre in the afternoon, then more walking between the exhibitions, until it was time to leave. Both of us had our cameras. Both of us had chosen a fixed focal length.

Same day. Same light. Same streets.

We each came back with a series of photographs, very different from one another.

Something in how each of us decides, in a fraction of a second, that this deserves our attention, and not that. That now is the time, and not a step later. Those decisions accumulate into something that looks, in the end, like a vision. You do not choose your vision. You just keep making those small decisions and eventually you look back and there it is.

How do you see? I mean that as a real question, not a rhetorical one. Not how do you frame, or what equipment do you use, or what are your influences. How do you actually see, in the moment, before any of that?

How Do You See

IF One Day — Yann Courté

Si à Sète... — Étienne Pons

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