France’s approach to photographing strangers in public spaces is refreshingly simple: she waits. “I try to stay there for as long as I can,” she explains. “They either accept you or not. But I stay, and I stay, and I stay. So then they get fed up. They stop seeing me or they stop behaving as what they think I’m there for, and they just go back to their life. And that’s when my work starts.” This patience allows her to move past the performative smiles and staged moments. By remaining present until people forget about her camera, France captures something rare—the natural rhythms of daily life. “I wait for them to be doing their natural thing,” she says. “I become part of the background.”
