Honorable Mention
NatureLaw
DESCRIPTION
We are used to seeing places that are carefully preserved and maintained. But what about places that are left out?In all my projects, I’m looking for places with story. My work is built in the specific field of ruined places, stripped of their original function and shine, to draw a new form of aesthetic appeal.In Italy, isolated villages or old houses are abandoned, condemned by the rural exodus or emigration. Many areas have been forgotten, and their heritage, made up not only of stone but also of history and culture, is doomed to natural destruction.
This villa after having known a glorious past, finds itself today in a state of decay. This leads us to reflect on materiality and temporality. The luxury of the past years is only a distant memory. Composition, ornaments, frescoes, colors are only the witnesses of this ancient grandeur as the building threatens to collapse.
Via this picture I wanted to highlight the power of nature in a much more philosophical way. The architecture is grand, in a decomposition stage. It intertwines the built and the natural. It reflects the marks of time to transform itself.
The connection of those two parts in my photography demonstrates a fight from two unbalanced forces. A battle that seems lost in advance, defining nature as transforming, combative, victorious and responding to its own rules. "NatureLaw"
AUTHOR
I’m a french photographer born in 1983, for the past years I have been shooting places that are abandoned and difficult to access but that either have an interior beauty or a decadent architecture.Those architectures trouble me because they show the impact of passing time, under the influence of nature as well as the various actions of mankind.
My aesthetic approach aims to question the lifecycle of the building, the reason for its existence. More importantly, it leads to a collective awareness of our overconsumption on a large scale. What fate do we give to those buildings?
I always have a fairly frontal way of representing places, with classic framing. I somehow aspire to subjective objectivity. Technically, this may seem simple, but the choice of a focal length is already an interpretation: whether or not to leave certain elements in the field, the distance, the height with the foreground architectural ... I introduce a bias in the way I want it to be seen.
I focus my attention on the lines, perspectives as well as the textures following a sculptor approach. My pictures describe interiors where the materials are imposing and excessive. This power, echoing solidity, is only obsolete in the face of the power of nature and time. The opposition of these two forces inevitably leads to the downfall of these places.
I don't want to present a picture of a place just to document it, I aspire to show something deeper. I invite the viewer to enter a different environment, a kind of parallel universe. A world in silence where the ambivalence of all these forces generally reveals the fragility of life.
