At the heart of the current climate crisis is not only a societal problem of natural resource exploitation and pollution, but also a certain degradation of our individual relationship to nature. The sociologist Harmut Rosa, in an illuminating passage from his book Resonance, A Sociology of the Relationship to the World, explains that "what we experience as beauty [...] is a mode of being-in-the-world in which subject and world respond to each other. Beauty designates a form of relationship." We encounter this beauty in works of art, but also in nature, which is increasingly perceived as a mute Other that we consider as a resource, a non-human entity on which we would depend but to which we would not likely belong. Thus, a resonant relationship to the world, and especially to nature, seems increasingly difficult as we are unavailable for encounter and relationship.
It is with such a reflection that I have created the photographs that constitute this project titled Resonance. While producing the images, I explored nature as a place of interaction, where the elements (vegetal, aquatic, mineral) are transformed, or even animated by the photographic process. Whether in the form of interventions or ephemeral performances, I wanted to create a work where the encounter of the territory is the very subject of the work, where the medium of photography acts as the revealing element of the interactions, while itself being a participating member of this relationship. In this context, I wanted photography to be more than just a tool, to act, transform and shape the essence of the encounters so that it helps me to maintain a resonant relationship with the world.
For several years, I have been looking for ways to represent nature that avoid transforming it into a pure object detached from our cultural biases. I try to thwart this utilitarian view of nature by acknowledging, through different strategies, the place I myself occupy in the landscapes I photograph. In short, that my projects would be less 'about' a place or space than projects produced 'in' place and space. This distinction is, in my opinion, essential to the understanding of my art practice, which could be imagined at the junction of Land Art and the more personal and intimate practices of lyrical and poetic photography.
Finally, I explored photography as a ritual: in religion, the ritual serves to materialize the divine, to make the link between the material world and that of the gods. In the same way, the photographic act, for me, bridges the gap between experience and image. Photographing, as a ritual, allows me to interact with nature: when an event occurs, I dialogue with it through photographic experimentation. I use the flash to "surprise" reality, take advantage of exposure errors, provoke and transform places through discrete interventions or ephemeral performances. I am attentive to the breakdowns of normality that occur when we contact with beings and things, watching for the moments when the real turns into the unreal and embodies it once it has metamorphosed into a photographic image.