Madame Alice De Borgher.

I met Alice in 2018, when she was living above my parents-in-law in Porte de Clignancourt, Paris.

Alice lived alone well into her later years. She was 101 when she died, and despite her age, there was a remarkable resilience about her. She remained fiercely independent, deeply connected to the people around her and passionately engaged with her local community and political life.

She had lived through World War II and had been part of the French Resistance. Over the time I knew her, she shared fragments of a life that felt almost impossible to imagine now, stories of courage, fear, resistance and survival.

I began photographing her, initially simply wanting to make a portrait, but the photographs became something more. They were a way of spending time with her and trying to capture something of the person behind those extraordinary stories, her strength, humour, independence and the quiet determination with which she continued to live her life.

For me, Alice embodies a quieter kind of rebellion. Not necessarily through grand gestures, but through resilience, independence and an unwillingness to disengage from life. At 101, she was still curious, still politically engaged, still living on her own terms.