Photos by Bieke Depoorter/Magnum Photos

Each year, the photo festival Image Singulières invites a photographer to the little southern French town of Sète to make a series of photographs. During my time there, I wandered around and, attracted by the atmosphere of the night, became curious about what was happening behind closed doors. Some kind people opened them, and a nocturnal vision of the city was presented to me. The surroundings had a cinematic, dreamlike atmosphere, and each visual poem in the series conveys the muted pulsations of a sleeping city. In the shelter of darkness and silence, these are real people, balancing on the thin line between fiction and reality.

See more photos by Bieke Depoorter on her website.