L’ancien Légionnaire
L’ancien Légionnaire
Medium: Oil paint on canvas
Size: 76 × 101 × 2 cm
During my travels in Morocco, I met this former French Foreign Legionnaire. We had little in common, including language, but after I bought him a couple of beers he agreed to let me photograph him.
It was not just his face that caught my attention. There was something about the whole man — the hat with its strip of fabric tied around it, his bearing, and the sense of a life very different from my own.
Only later, studying the photographs, did I begin to notice the expression that had emerged: the tight mouth, the raised nostril, and what seemed to be a certain disdain for me, my camera, and my easy backpacker’s life — something I still find entirely understandable and which still makes me smile.
This portrait grew from that encounter.
L’ancien Légionnaire
Medium: Oil paint on canvas
Size: 76 × 101 × 2 cm
During my travels in Morocco, I met this former French Foreign Legionnaire. We had little in common, including language, but after I bought him a couple of beers he agreed to let me photograph him.
It was not just his face that caught my attention. There was something about the whole man — the hat with its strip of fabric tied around it, his bearing, and the sense of a life very different from my own.
Only later, studying the photographs, did I begin to notice the expression that had emerged: the tight mouth, the raised nostril, and what seemed to be a certain disdain for me, my camera, and my easy backpacker’s life — something I still find entirely understandable and which still makes me smile.
This portrait grew from that encounter.
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