During my season (winter 2024–2025) as a cleaning agent in a sports and leisure establishment, I was confronted with spaces marked by daily life and its often invisible or ignored traces. Removing meal remains, bodily fluids, abandoned waste, footprints, marks of displaced furniture and all other ephemeral traces left by visitors was part of my responsibility.
By cleaning and photographing these elements (feces, vomit, puddles of urine, marks and waste) I wanted to document what is generally considered impure or undesirable. These traces, although unattractive at first glance, tell stories and serve as signs of presence.
Cleaning them, photographing them and exhibiting them is also giving a voice to the cleaning agent’s job, making invisible work visible.
There is something fascinating in dirt: it bears witness to passage, intimacy, the life of bodies. These pages transform what is repugnant into graphic form. Printing in risography reinforces their abstract aspect while partially attenuating the repulsive character of the traces.
