Ten years ago, I left La Louvière, a small town in southern Belgium.
Still marked by the traces of its former mining and steel-making industries, the town seems frozen in a working-class past that no longer exists. The shops in the town center are struggling, and plans to redevelop the industrial sites are uncertain. La Louvière is now searching for a future.
Through the young people I’ve photographed, I catch a glimpse of my own adolescence reflected back at me.
Most of the people I knew have left, but returning to the place where I come from is a return to something hidden that continues to bind me to it. A kind of love that is searching for its own path.