I discovered AlUla by chance, when the Royal Commission for AlUla and the French Agency for AlUla Development invited me, in the summer of 2019, to produce a photographic book on this still unknown region. Of course, I didn't know at the time what this remarkable place would bring out in me. I knew deserts, having participated in the Paris-Dakar. I had read Arabian Sands by Wilfred Thesiger. The desert, in itself, has always fascinated me. However, I was far from imagining that a desert among other deserts would resonate with me so deeply.

Although I have always been attracted to Saudi Arabia, I had not done much research on AlUla before going there. Perhaps to leave room for the unexpected and the surprise.

The discovery, when the day came, was a real shock. AlUla aroused in me a ferocious appetite and an irresistible desire to capture, as accurately as possible, what the place managed to evoke. Each discovery led to the next. The light changed throughout the day in shades of ocher, beige, gray, and gold. The resounding silence accentuated the mysticism of the place. The deserted expanses, the monumental canyons, the oasis persisting despite this hostile environment, everything invited respect and humility. I had the feeling that I was penetrating the heart of the world, that I was engaging in a dialog with the lost civilizations that had succeeded one another, over the centuries, in the valley of wonders.

The shoot for the book I was hired for lasted almost a month. I would have signed for a year, if it had been up to me. For four weeks, without interruption, I photographed the region, its contours, its reliefs, its customs, its vestiges, its inhabitants, its past, its present, hoping to capture the magic of the place. I hope to offer to the readers, to the whole world, the vivid emotion that this unprecedented spectacle gave me. The emotion of the photographer and that of the man. The goal was not to take "beautiful" photos but to transcribe moments, ordinary and miraculous, to explore faces, to translate a feeling, to capture the elusive aura of an encounter; that of AlUla.

The book born from this encounter, A Dream of AlUla, published this winter, is a compilation of moments captured in the warmth of life, where you can read, I hope, the enthusiasm of the photographer and the amazed look of a little boy discovering the unfathomable experience of beauty.

AlUla is a mirage, a sleeping beauty. It is a daydream.

I once had this dream. The dream of AlUla.