Sète 08 (second-hand)

CéTàVOIR, an association promoting photography, invited Anders Petersen to an artist's residency in Sète (France) in 2007 and 2008.

"These last years, Anders Petersen's photographs have become more contrasted, "harsher" in their form whilst remaining just as tender in their theme and in the relation to their subjects. Sète confirms this, where more than anywhere else, whilst offering us an album of his encounters - although incomplete as he only keeps the photographs he is truly satisfied with - Anders Petersen creates a vibrant sunny atmosphere, where you can smell the sea, enjoy the canal and its jousting, the market, the fish... Small details and grandiose facades. An atmosphere that invites us to really look at the town. (...)

Because Petersen is so alert and aware, eager to understand and to share, just as he shows us the profoundly human dimension of his often socially excluded subjects, he manages to find beauty, form and feeling in even the ugliest parts of the town. As far as - and this remains a private joke between us- photographing in the most beautiful manner possible - an octopus."

Christian Caujolle