The origin of the 'Mater' project is lost in the mists of my life. I think I have always taken photographs in view of this project, even though I was not yet conscious of it. Mater is a series that can tell at the same time of a universal love for the Earth and a personal desire for contact with nature. Mater is also the desire to trace memory of my private life, my choices, and small daily moments. Above all, the project pursues the memory of the body of the woman I love and with whom I shared my life. The photos were all taken together with my wife, during the travels made to the four corners of the planet; India and Australia, the Mediterranean from which we come and North America. Mater is an organic and sensual desire towards nature and towards the female body. The woman is central and has a metaphysical, almost "sacred" stature. The same term Mater represents, for me, the dualism between woman and nature, just as there is the dualism between universal creation and intimate storytelling. Mater are always hinted images, transient, minimal; I created them as if they were whispers in the wind. Subtle visions that can penetrate time and be returned to the public who will want to contemplate their essence. My references are the great visionaries of photography like Minor White, but also the Japanese Yamamoto Masao and Shoji Ueda. Finally, to better understand the project, I report two different passages. The first is an extract of the text that my old curator wrote for the first exhibition of Mater, in Brussels in 2018. The project was still in its embryonic phase, but some fundamental characteristics were already present. The second passage is a poem, which I wrote straight away, one day many years ago, when I decided that sooner or later this photographic series would be born, and that it would be entitled Mater.

« It's a story of begetting first and foremost. First of all. Before me, there is my mother. Before us, there is the earth. Mater is about the figure of woman as part of the nature, encompassed in it, almost merging into it; evolving from a semblance of primal harmony to discomfort. Stone becomes sea, sea becomes landscape, landscape becomes body, and body dreams itself up and metamorphoses... Mater brings us back to the essence of things and conveys us to an indefinite place where the organic intertwines with the mineral. Mater. At the same time the mother, the creative force and the nature. Porosities. From one to the other. To-and-for movements. Outdoors landscapes, wild, soft or rough, with or without human traces; landscapes that enclose outlooks. The initial cold loneliness melts in the fire of encounters.»
Cit. Gatien Du Bois, for Mater Exhibition. Peinture Fraiche Gallery, Brussels, 2018.

Mater is the lava stone that slides towards the sea. Mater is the irregular, bizarre landscape that returns in my dreams. Mater is the wonder of the places I do not know. Mater is the woman I dreamed, touched, loved... Mater is the eulogy of slowness, so in contrast with the world around me. Mater is nature, which I love and fear. Mater is my soul, the transcendence that I cannot tell anyone. Mater is the memory of the womb that has forsaken me, which I lost all traces. Mater is the thought of all desires, regrets, successes and defeats. I had to make a choice, leaving out the images where civilization has left its traces. I concentrated on Earth and on the body, key elements of my Desire.