“Battre la campagne” is a French expression with multiple meanings. It can mean wandering the countryside, seeing some country. During a hunt, it means to seek out game. In the military sense, it means to seek out information about the enemy. In a figurative sense, it refers to having one's mind elsewhere, to pass the time daydreaming. These multiple definitions can be found at work in these photographs. They also refer to my state of mind when making the photographs with the “reportage” method, using a normal lens to frame the world in search of what the young Flaubert noted during his own beating of the fields and shorelines: “that imbecile astonishment which takes hold of you when you consider people living where we don't live, and spending their time on affairs other than our own”.