Dean Marsh

Vive Vide

Vive Vide is a series of images taken in and around towns and villages in the French departement of Deux-Sevres that I've been working on for the last four years. Vive Vide is a play on words - 'vive' usually means 'long live', but can also mean 'lively' and 'vide' can mean both 'empty' or 'emptiness'. This part of France is very sparsely populated and you can drive through three or four small villages, one after the other, without seeing a single person. There are also lots of abandoned buildings and open spaces in this area, many left empty and untouched for years. Rather than getting up close and documenting the lives of people in these places, I want the viewer to imagine lives lived behind the closed doors and empty streets. All images are shot on a Sinar 4x5 large format camera.

Photographer

Dean Marsh

I worked as a professional advertising photographer in London for over twenty years before giving that up in 2013 to work in the film/TV industry. I currently work as prop master on feature films and the occasional TV drama; also doing the photography of the finished and fully dressed sets. Over the last four years I have been photographing the towns/villages and surrounding countryside of the Deux-Sevres departement in France - specifically the area around the town of Thouars. These images will eventually be part of a solo exhibition and possibly an accompanying book.

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