It’s June 2004 on France’s Cote d’Azur. I ‘ve just discovered a large abandoned villa that has been vandalized by humans and weather over many years. With my photographers eye, this scene stands up and begs an essay; exquisite marble floors overgrown with vines and strewn with old clothing; expansive shattered windows framing millionaire yachts on the blue Med below; all the back walls of the main house blown away as if hit by a 70mm Howitzer; a bidet hanging by its plumbing swinging in the wind; whole rooms exposed on the second floors remind me of a scene from Ramallah or Beirut: surrounded by palm trees and terraces laced with glass shards and broken roof tiles.
Certainly no one is actually living here.
As I raise my camera, I hear a low whistle. Then another one, and as I look towards the source, I see him, George, sitting in an overstuffed chair precariously perched on a slab of concrete and twisted rebars jutting out of the broken third story, a razor in one hand and a fancy mirror in the other.
George says” Wait. I’ll come down… finish shave.”
He shakes my hand with a smile and proffers a fireplace mantle piece fashioned into a bench under a fig tree.
Turns out he’s been here for three years. No heat, no water, no power, no doors, no windows and a couple of rooms up there with a serviceable roof.
He invites me up. Pretty amazing. There‘s a boat up there. George sailed single-handed from Australia to here. Now he’s building a catamaran to sail back.
I wish him a decent wind at his back.
He smiles and invites me to return anytime to Chateau George.
I will. But I won’t wait too long. He may have gone for a sail.
Hulls on a rough sea
a homemade man
seeking george
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