I’ve always been enchanted by the beauty of the natural world. At the same time, I’ve also felt a tension that is perhaps best described as the risk of losing this beauty, and for many of us, losing it without ever having really looked.
Losing nature and our appreciation for it, also means we lose a part of ourselves. The shifting baseline syndrome shows that what we lose becomes something that never existed. In an attempt to preserve the memory of our landscape I’ve set out to create a body of work that builds on the legacy of photographers like Anne Brigman and Imogen Cunningham.
Working with, mainly female, nudes in landscapes I bring humanity in the natural scene, reveal scale, and question our relationship with nature and with ourselves. The landscapes I work in include natural ones, but also ones that have been scarred by war and industry.
In Memories, I work specifically in an area where I spent my summer holidays as a child, returning to a place that reminds me of something intangible. Photographing the landscapes there in an attempt to make visible what’s been lost in time, I also explore the concept of abstraction and the impossibility of making a memory resurface exactly the way we remember it.
I hope that my work inspires people that see it, to slow down and start thinking about their own relationship to nature. When is the last time they felt joy through the visceral experience that a simple walk outside can bring? I also build my oeuvre as a document for future generations, as it will hold images of landscapes that no longer exist, and may provide answers to them as to how their generation ended up where they are.
About Julien
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