Freedom is volume 5 of The 11 Collection, born from the encounter between Laurent Morice and Corinne Bruel, founders of Camping-Car Park, and Philippe Herbet.
I was born in the 1960s into an agritourism family along the Atlantic coast. Growing up, my world was a blend of agricultural production and the curiosity of visiting tourists. From a very young age, my parents encouraged me to be entrepreneurial, letting me dream up products, solve problems, and learn the art of customer satisfaction firsthand.
After 20 years of running my own campground and serving in professional unions within a highly regulated and rigid industry, I felt the need for a change.
Together with my wife, Corinne Bruel, I set out to design something new: a product defined by freedom and mobility. We wanted to eliminate the constraints for motorhome travelers, allowing them to explore without limits.
Driven by a deep-seated desire to be of service and to leave a lasting mark on the industry, Camping-Car Park was born.
My freedom resides in a few simple things: my camera slung over my shoulder, my notebook and pen in my bag, and the absence of any itinerary. I walk at random, I take subways and buses, or I drive with no fixed destination, and I stop wherever the light detains me. It is a state of total attentiveness, with no imposed direction save the encounter itself.
I move through a floating world, watching life unfurl. The faces that pass, the gestures, the silences between two sentences, the glint of light upon things, the turning of the seasons. Often, those I cross paths with are my own reflection, a part of myself revealed in a stranger, a woman or a man unknown to me. To photograph and to write are one and the same gesture: an attempt to hold fast to what slips away, before time effaces it.
Yet this freedom I lay claim to is not without limits. It is built upon respect: respect for the people I photograph, never in degrading circumstances; for the places I pass through; for the time it takes to truly see something before showing it. A bracing freedom, never won in advance, like the Basque word that names it: Askatasuna.
The photographer’s view
For this volume, Philippe Herbet roams the French Basque Country from the Atlantic coast to the Pyrenean valleys, photographing at eye level with the patience of a flâneur. Color images of landscapes, faces, surf culture and camper vans are paired with short texts that serve as open counterpoints rather than captions.
Laurent Morice and Corinne Bruel are outdoor hospitality veterans who spent twenty years running campsites before trading their offices for the open road. To truly understand their community, they spent an entire year living out of a motorhome, exploring backroads and uncovering the real needs of modern travelers.
Philippe Herbet is a Belgian photographer and writer living in the Basque Country. Curious about the lives of others and the multiplicity of cultures, he travels as the rhizome pursues its underground course, photographs the people he meets, writes their stories and histories that unfold like the panels of an exhibition.
