Square Dance, Los Angeles County, California, 2013

"The people are what is not there yet, never in the right place, never ascribable to the place and time where anxieties and dreams await." (Jacques Rancière) One day while carrying Russell Lee’s photographs (from the Farm Security Administration Series) under my arm, someone asked me about the film, the film he assumed the images belonged to. I had to reply that there was no film, the images weren’t mine. But this question became an obsession, a ritornello. What film could be enclosed in those photographs? What was the context, the portion of the real there? Who were these people? Who was hosting the party? To what music were they dancing? Romantic songs, political songs? What were the relationships between the couples? How did the young man tear his shirt? What provoked the tension? And the expectation in their expressions?... And why did they arouse in me such an emotional response, such a strong wish for a narrative, even a fragmentary one?