07/09/2026
As the summer ends, we would like to share with you a captivating photo series - Conte d’été (Summer Tale) by Catherine Henriette.
For around thirty years, Catherine Henriette has been observing China, with its economic, cultural and social evolution—years in which the pulse of the country has been rising, things have been moving fast and probably too fast.
As a firsthand witness to this frenzy, Catherine Henriette paused time with her Leica camera and rolls of film. With modern China as her backdrop, she captured vanishing points and figures, photographed like a shifting mirage.
Catherine Henriette revisited the beaches of northern China to photograph the Conte d’été (Summer tale) series—where she had escaped to on scorching hot days as a student in Beijing.
With her keen observation of the pleasant beach bathers and the seaside once she was familiar with, she captured the seemingly eternally good-nature of the atmosphere—as if time has been frozen in a wonderful long vacation.
Her revisit to the coast has given her a delicate and sharp insight into the dramatic changes of the cities—and the merrily damages that modernity has brought.
