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Book Review: A Year in Avignon: A Memoir by Hans Hickerson

May 6th, 2025 by

from ‘A Year in Avignon: A Memoir’ © Hans Hickerson

A journey of transformation is a powerful and enduring trope that resonates deeply because it mirrors our own experiences of growth and change through life’s adventures, big or small. In essence, this form of storytelling explores how a character, often thrust into unfamiliar circumstances through a journey, undergoes significant internal changes. They rarely return to their starting point as the same person.

A Year in Avignon by Hans Hickerson is a story of his year of college study abroad. It takes place in the late 1970s in Avignon, France. Hickerson grew up in Portland, Oregon, so that firmly places him as an outsider in France, but his love of language and the arts gives him an “in” during his culture-shifting journey.

This type of photobook has a narrative that tells a story and recreates the experience, versus a collections of people, places, or things in a particular category. It’s an honest memoir. Hickerson states that these books function as descriptive essays and they accumulate examples and variations to develop and flesh out the subject matter covered. Typically the images in those books are taken over an extended period of time. Days. Months. Years. As brief or as long as it takes.

Spread from ‘A Year in Avignon: A Memoir’ © Hans Hickerson

Spread from ‘A Year in Avignon: A Memoir’ © Hans Hickerson

One of the admirable aspects I found about A Year in Avignon by Hans Hickerson is the metered, diaristic approach to an experience that occurred decades ago. Hickerson shows great restraint in telling his story. I’ve seen and read other memoirs that try to do way too much, provide too much detail and flood the reader with so much information that it’s hard to know what is important to the author. This does not happen at all in A Year in Avignon. The sum total of text in the book is minimal, and it supports the narrative in all the right ways. His text doesn’t stand in the way of experiencing the images and the narrative he creates. The paging and pacing throughout the book seems very natural and unforced, and Hickerson wisely uses blank pages as visual sign posts when the overall narrative is about to shift. I really love blank pages in a photo book when they function perfectly.

The book has a pleasant, leisurely pace; like a relaxing walk through a small town. The linear storyline takes us from the beginning of the trip, through its tentative starts and introductions as the author ‘dips his toes in the waters’ of new places and people, to meeting his host family, and bonding with his fellow comrades on their collective journey at the sites and cafés. We are almost halfway through the book when the visual style of the photos really hits its stride with well-composed and considered cityscapes, streetscapes, scenes of people and life in Provence. Hickerson makes the comment, “Street life was a constant backdrop to everyday activities, the photographer an observer but also a participant.”

Hickerson shows us the activity and ambience of the city as workers shovel dirt from the front scoop of a tractor, people gather outdoors having discussions, a rainy French street, a library scene, a view of a worker hauling meat from a delivery truck, and street artists with a cluster of admirers looking on. We see a child standing in the doorway of a shop, a bakery or sweet shop perhaps, where she has planted herself in the doorway, but is cautiously regarding the camera. The image made me recall, in a very complimentary way, the Cartier-Bresson street-scene photo of a boy carrying bottles of wine (Rue Moffetard, c. 1954). It’s delightfully ironic that the country and subject matter are so close to each other. I love when happenstance steps in like this.

Spread from ‘A Year in Avignon: A Memoir’ © Hans Hickerson

Spread from ‘A Year in Avignon: A Memoir’ © Hans Hickerson

from ‘A Year in Avignon: A Memoir’ © Hans Hickerson

Images of the French countryside filter in somewhere in the last third of the book, and Hickerson relates in the text that after a certain point in his journey, he decided to drop out of his classes. He confesses, “…the study abroad program that was supposed to give you experiences with another culture in some ways kept you from experiencing the other culture. Classes in English, academic assignments, group travel, and the constant presence of other Americans limited rather than facilitated contact with the French. Instead of continuing in the program for the spring academic quarter I dropped out to be free to explore.”

The author’s physical journey has acted as a catalyst for an inner voyage, growth and change. Confronting new environments, challenges, and people forces Hickerson to eschew old perspectives, develop new skills, and confront his own limitations and strengths. As in many hero journeys, or stories of transformative events, the process can lead to profound shifts in their values, beliefs, and understanding of themselves and the world around them.

Spread from ‘A Year in Avignon: A Memoir’ © Hans Hickerson

Spread from ‘A Year in Avignon: A Memoir’ © Hans Hickerson

Spread from ‘A Year in Avignon: A Memoir’ © Hans Hickerson

I had my own transformative experience via a trip abroad to Germany as an exchange student, so I can appreciate how Hickerson encountered new perspectives that challenged his assumptions. He fosters resilience by deciding to take new paths while he is already on a completely new path. He forms new connections that broaden his understanding of the world and himself. During his trip to Avignon he forms many friendships and a close relationship with a girl who introduced him to an area of France that is culturally and topographically different, and his photos reflect the change from his cityscapes to the bucolic views of Nyons with their own personality; much like his own change occurring within.

The final image and text in the book reflects the author‘s return back home to Portland, Oregon. He mentions that things didn’t look the same as he remembered, and he regards everything from a whole new perspective as he adjusts to being back home. But like many things in our lives that are transformative, those grand experiences shape and form us into who we are the rest of our lives. This is a line of demarcation. Hickerson says his recounting of his journey was something many people just weren’t “necessarily interested in hearing about the fascinating alternate reality I just exited”. It hadn’t happened to them. It was his experience. It was real. He had been there, lived it, made the pictures, and was transformed by something that was now part of him. 

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A Year in Avignon by Hans Hickerson
Hardcover, 10” X 9”, 144 pages
114 black and white photographs
Edition of 500

Published by Fishpond Press

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Hans Hickerson has made photographs since the 1970s and over the years has explored different ways of working, including collage, cut-outs, framing in non-traditional ways, and contextualizing photographs in books. He has a degree in French from Portland State University and a Maîtrise de Lettres Modernes from the University of Avignon. Along with his personal work he reviews photobooks and is the editor of virtual magazine PhotoBook Journal. He lives in Portland, Oregon.

About Cary Benbow

Photographer, Writer, Publisher of Wobneb Magazine

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