025, Thibaut Derien

Twenty years ago, Thibaut Derien began travelling across France, avoiding major roads and soulless suburban sprawl; garish signs, prefab buildings, uniform housing estates, endless roundabouts. Instead, he sought out the last remaining small shops: abandoned, silent witnesses of forgotten trades and fashions.

These empty storefronts — deserted and weathered by time —moved him. He photographed those that stirred a special kind of emotion, capturing the quiet dignity of their decay. They became the outlines of a ghost town, standing in quiet resistance to distant shopping centres and impersonal consumer hubs.

In this ghost city, shutters are drawn, doors sealed, windows bricked. The facades are stripped of depth, silencing what once made these places special: human connection, community, and proximity.

Once a singer in the 2000s, Derien discovered photography while on tour. Today, shaped perhaps by the silence of these ghost towns, he has left music behind; trading words for images, and sound for stillness.