Closed eyes portraits

Everything started with a game.
It was during a walk in the forest, my daughter and I were making a racket. I asked Louise to close her eyes and to count up to ten. Then, I took the picture. It was not planned, to take a picture, just for fun.
Since that day, emotion has been the same each time I have been looking at this portrait. Louise is there, offering me, her arms wide open. She is four years old, shared between amusement, dreams and fear. The big tree under which she is sheltering and counting measures her fragility.
I am watching her pink, nearly transparent eyelids. The delicate but real stress of her forehead, her eyebrows, her mouth and her retained laughter reveal an intense interior life.
I am thinking of these beautiful words by Raymond Depardon: “I am looking for a short happiness to keep it for a long time” * I like the picture’s time. It is a pause to love.
I am softly looking at Louise’s smoothed skin and the colored shapes of her dress. Her thin and loosened locks of hair are like gold threads.

Alain Levillain