IN IMAGES
The Songs of the Sirens
Under the spotlights of Normandy’s cabarets, Frédéric Stucin ventures into the backstage of metamorphosis. Between glitter and solitude, he portrays a fragile world, suspended between stage and life, where identities dissolve and reassemble in the glow of neon lights.
By Jonas Cuénin. Photographs by Frédéric Stucin.
Night falls over Deauville. In a ballroom, voices warm up, faces are painted, wigs adjusted. The backstage becomes a place of waiting and promise. Before the lights come on, there is that sacred in-between moment — when one prepares to be seen. Frédéric Stucin captures that instant when artifice becomes truth.
Along the roads of Normandy, the photographer followed the trail of cabarets and dance halls. Voices, laughter, hoarse refrains float in the evening mist. In front of his lens, the performers stand tall, eyes fixed on the camera. They do not act; they exist — between exhaustion and pride. Their bodies tell the story of a world both tiny and immense.
In the seaside town, everything appears orderly and pristine, but behind the façades, other lives are invented. Stucin explores these margins, these fleeting places where celebration becomes necessity. The sea is near, unseen, yet its breath can be heard in the images. A certain melancholy takes hold — not sadness, but an acute awareness of passing time.
What draws Frédéric Stucin is the vibration of the real — that instant when flesh and scenery merge. Here, as a photographer of intimacy and ambiguity, he does not judge, he accompanies. His images do not show the performance; they whisper it.
“The Song of the Sirens,” by Frédéric Stucin, is a new series created during a residency in Deauville as part of the Planches Contact Festival 2025. The exhibition runs until January 5, 2026.
