“The film grew out of my meeting with Dimitri. We quickly discovered we shared a passion for photography. I’m a cinematographer, and he has dreamed of becoming a photographer since childhood. When he first showed me some of his photos, I was immediately struck by the power of his gaze. In his portraits, something both sensitive and precise always seemed to emerge, an intimate connection with the people photographed. At that time, Dimitri said he had left photography behind. He felt there was no point in continuing down that path when his eyesight was failing. By then, he had already lost his central vision and hadn’t been able to see colors for years. Time passed, and he felt the urge to pick up his camera again, to reconnect with his practice and his reflections on photography. The film opened a dialogue between our approaches to photography.

Dimitri has a unique way of capturing the world around him. He found in photography a language that allowed him to turn his gaze toward others: he enjoys photographing his friends, the boys he meets, or sometimes strangers. As he explains in the film, hidden behind his camera, he feels at peace. His role as a photographer distances him from his visual impairment. His camera becomes an extension of his gaze. Bonds of friendship, desire, and sometimes anger take shape. Dimitri’s gaze turns to Black Lives Matter activists or passing lovers.

He takes photos, I film him. He invites me to shift my perspective, to question my way of seeing. Through our wanderings, our conversations, and the encounters we have, photography becomes a space for exchange between Dimitri and me, between two sensory worlds. This is how I filmed more intimate, more personal moments on 16mm and Super 8. Dimitri is absent from these images. They are impressions, silhouettes, landscapes, objects, things that attract my gaze. It’s never about seeing as Dimitri does; that’s why these images are in color while Dimitri’s are in black and white. With film, I try to recapture a certain spontaneity and fragility in my gaze. Seeing is a matter of desire. When Dimitri takes photos, he often lets himself be guided by his intuition and instinct, and then rediscovers them on his computer. It’s, in a way, the analog experience.

As the years go by, Dimitri feels an increasing urgency to take photos while his eyesight still allows him to, and to put things in place to be prepared, even though, as he says, it’s impossible to truly be ready. He alone understands the vertigo that grips him. In the film, he encounters Pierre, a friend who lost his sight 20 years ago. Pierre is in a different, more peaceful stage of his life. Dimitri lives with the fact that his passion for photography is precisely what prevents him from developing his art. The film focuses on what he does to achieve this, despite everything. In this process, the gaze and the desire to look as a form of resistance are central.

Throughout the film, our images echo each other. Our imaginations intersect, our sensibilities meet and sometimes collide. Dimitri invites us to look at what we don’t see, toward the hidden face of the Earth.”