honorable mention
- Jonk - france
title
Naturalia: Chronicle of Contemporary Ruins
This ecological consciousness, that moves me since my youngest age, has little by little focused my interest on abandoned places reclaimed by Nature. She is stronger, and whatever happens to Man, She will always be there.
Moreover, Naturalia: Chronicle of Contemporary Ruins asks a fundamental question: that of the place of Man on Earth and his relationship with Nature. Far from being pessimistic, and at a time when Man’s domination of Nature has never been so extreme, it aims to wake our consciousness.
Man builds, Man abandons. Every time for his own peculiar reasons. Nature does not care about those reasons. But one thing is for sure, when Man leaves, She comes back and She takes back everything.
French poet Léo Ferré said “With Time goes, everything goes”. So, when Nature and Time will have taken back what Man abandons, what will be left of our civilization?
Roaming in abandoned places looking for graffiti, I realized the intensity of the atmospheres and the beauty of the spectacle of passage of time: rust, decaying and peeling painted walls, broken windows, nature taking back create unbelievable sceneries, of high photogeny. For me, these scenes felt like infinite poetry.
At the hour of choices, this new passion imposed itself, even if I could not get rid of my nickname, symbol of my graffiti artist times, highly important to me.
Today, fifteen years later, I visited more than one thousand locations in more than forty countries on four continents.
With time, my interest concentrated on what appeared to me to be the strongest in this vast subject of abandonment: Nature taking back. It is poetic, even magic, to see this Nature retaking what used to be hers, reintegrating through broken windows, cracks on the walls, spaces built by Man and then neglected, until sometimes guzzling them up entirely.
In March 2018, I released the book “Naturalia” on the topic and currently work on volume II asked by the publisher.
In June 2018, I quit my job to fully dedicate myself to photography and to this subject.
back to gallery
entry description
As a child, I saw a wildlife documentary that marked my life. It focused on the melting of the ice caps and its consequences on polar bears’ life. I still remember this bear that struggled to swim and find a piece of ice floe. It seems that "children are like wet cement. Whatever falls on them makes an impression." (Dr Haim Ginott). This vision marked me so much that during all my childhood, every time any of my parents did anything that seemed bad for the environment, it told them this sentence: «Watch out, you kill the bears!!”This ecological consciousness, that moves me since my youngest age, has little by little focused my interest on abandoned places reclaimed by Nature. She is stronger, and whatever happens to Man, She will always be there.
Moreover, Naturalia: Chronicle of Contemporary Ruins asks a fundamental question: that of the place of Man on Earth and his relationship with Nature. Far from being pessimistic, and at a time when Man’s domination of Nature has never been so extreme, it aims to wake our consciousness.
Man builds, Man abandons. Every time for his own peculiar reasons. Nature does not care about those reasons. But one thing is for sure, when Man leaves, She comes back and She takes back everything.
French poet Léo Ferré said “With Time goes, everything goes”. So, when Nature and Time will have taken back what Man abandons, what will be left of our civilization?
about the photographer
When I was seventeen, I went to Barcelona to spend the summer. There, I discovered a huge graffiti culture which is a part me until today. Since that summer, I shoot street art and graffiti everywhere I go. Always with the idea of finding pictures that not everyone does, I started adventuring into in abandoned places, where graffiti artists often go to paint, to be alone and able to take time to make bigger and better pieces. After some time frequenting these artists, I started myself to paint there. That’s actually the reason why I adopted a nickname.Roaming in abandoned places looking for graffiti, I realized the intensity of the atmospheres and the beauty of the spectacle of passage of time: rust, decaying and peeling painted walls, broken windows, nature taking back create unbelievable sceneries, of high photogeny. For me, these scenes felt like infinite poetry.
At the hour of choices, this new passion imposed itself, even if I could not get rid of my nickname, symbol of my graffiti artist times, highly important to me.
Today, fifteen years later, I visited more than one thousand locations in more than forty countries on four continents.
With time, my interest concentrated on what appeared to me to be the strongest in this vast subject of abandonment: Nature taking back. It is poetic, even magic, to see this Nature retaking what used to be hers, reintegrating through broken windows, cracks on the walls, spaces built by Man and then neglected, until sometimes guzzling them up entirely.
In March 2018, I released the book “Naturalia” on the topic and currently work on volume II asked by the publisher.
In June 2018, I quit my job to fully dedicate myself to photography and to this subject.
back to gallery