In 2017, I was in Sicily, where my family comes from, and someone told me about a place called Scala dei Turchi. A white clay cliff above the sea, minimal, almost lunar. I looked it up quickly online, grabbed my camera and drove there in the stifling heat.

When I got there, I was disappointed. The purity I had pictured was buried under private parking lots, bars and restaurants. What was supposed to feel magical had turned into a packed tourist spot. A bit annoyed, I only took a few photos from angles I liked, telling myself I'd come back after the season, without the crowds and the selfies.

Back in Paris, something pushed me to go back to those photos. I decided to use them to rebuild the images I had in my head during the trip. Once I erased the people, the pictures started to slide toward abstraction and became another reality. I couldn't reach the place I'd imagined, so I made it, with digital tools and photomontage. What interested me was the gap between the real landscape and the one in my head.