"Albert Portrait"

Albert was encountered at Camp Faro in Cameroon, in November 2022. His face bears the marks of a physical, outdoor life: deep wrinkles, a gaze slightly veiled but alert, a nascent white beard. The handwritten annotation inscribed beneath the portrait — place, date, first name — is an integral part of the work, like a page torn from a travel notebook.

Albert is caught at three-quarters, looking back over his shoulder towards the viewer — a posture that speaks at once of attention and of reserve. The background treated in broad, very free grey-blue washes contrasts with the careful rendering of the face, concentrating all the light on that gaze which consents to meet ours without, for all that, giving everything away.