Sète 08 — Anders Petersen, 2008

Commissioned for the ImageSingulières festival, Sète 08 is Anders Petersen’s intimate and chaotic portrait of the southern French port town of Sète. Shot in 2008 and published as part of the festival's annual residency programme, the book brings Petersen’s signature visual grammar — grainy, close, almost fevered — to bear on a place often portrayed through Mediterranean cliché. What emerges instead is a dark, visceral, and deeply human street opera.

Petersen moves through bars, markets, back alleys, beach fronts, and private rooms, photographing faces and gestures with raw proximity. Every frame carries his classic emotional charge: tenderness without sentiment, confrontation without spectacle. Like his work in Café Lehmitz or Roma, Sète 08 shows Petersen’s unrelenting commitment to proximity — to being inside the scene, not observing from a distance. Part of a series that has featured the likes of Jacob Aue Sobol and Klavdij Sluban, Sète 08 stands out for its tactile, nocturnal intensity and its refusal to romanticise.

Technical Sheet
Title: Sète 08
Artist / Author: Anders Petersen
Date: 2008
Technique / Printing Method: Offset
Medium / Materials: Softcover with dust jacket
Dimensions (cm): Approx. 20 × 27
Language: French
Pages: Approx. 80
Publisher / Editor: Le Bec en l’air / ImageSingulières
Condition: Very good

Provenance: Antoine D'Agata Library (stamp on the back page)