The depth of field (literally in some cases) is remarkable. “I like to portray the different lines of the landscape as it stretches into the distance. The bands of fields and trees and hills. It’s not a dramatic landscape, it’s rather gentle and rolling, a bit like the South Downs. But very tidy. The French are incredibly tidy with their farmland, just as they are tidy with their gardens. They like to control nature.” And so does she, into controlled, interestingly-shaped compositions.

I stand on a chair to take a picture of Jean from above, trying to out Davey-Winter her, if you like. Then she wanders downstairs to allow me to look at the pictures more closely. I try an experiment I’ve tried before with impressionist paintings – taking my glasses off to see if it makes much difference. It doesn’t. I go downstairs with this news. “I’m not interested in small details,” she says. It’s as if the photographs have been painted after being blown up beyond their sharpest resolution. “I’m interested in form and composition,” she continues. “It’s much easier to do this when you create more abstract simplicity.” When I leave, my head is full of ideas about the way in which we look at things in modern society, about how much our view of the world is cropped into size for us, by TV and computer screens, by windscreens, by windows and by magazines. AL