Empty storefronts dot downtown, huge brick tobacco warehouses a block long, abandoned, awaiting creative reuse. Wilson, North Carolina is seemingly frozen in the 1970s.

Invited by the Eye on Main Street festival, photographer Cédric Roux has spent several periods there. For this photographer, accustomed to capturing the movement and intense life of New York streets and whose first book My Wonderland (out of print) was an energetic account of this bustling metropolis, the first contact with Wilson was a real shock.

In this new book, Before Rebirth, Cédric Roux delivers this sense of displacement, using photography to make visible a promise that is not yet tangible. With a population of 47,000, Wilson is a far cry from Manhattan’s 1.5 million. Accustomed to a human density that allows him to fully express his photographic style, Cédric Roux had to reinvent himself. He went in search of a different aesthetic. His photography has become more stripped-down, more documentary, but remains firmly anchored in a territory and retains a palette and framing that make it unique.

You can buy the photobook “BEFORE REBIRTH” HERE