land of quiet birds

retour

Born out of the confrontation with the photographic archives of a year down under in New Zealand, Land of quiet birds presents itself as an investigation, an itinerary, the one of a lost traveller, a seeker halfway between abandonment and lucidity, whose images will only make sense once the muffled violence of the ordinary is left behind.

In the course of events that have led to this ensemble, an effort stands out: how to shape the silence that permeates the forests I walked through. A silence that seems to say that something is on the lookout, ready to take a leap. Like remains of an ancient passage still echoing. In this silence is the story of a disappearance, shared by many other islands: the arrival of invasive animals, no matter what their shape, origin or intentions, often brings on a devastating impact to the environment. Very soon, there is not a lot left from the previous world. New Zealand’s fate was much the same. Thus, this work is mostly about this constant tension, the one between the human kind and its milieu, that rarely leads to a good ending for everyone.

It is by way of this silence, however, that a renewal can take place. Renewal of our planet, which evolves on a temporality that is very hard to relate to, and renewal of our own presence, one to which I cannot escape. For the birth and death cycle of life never ceases. Except maybe when I press the shutter button, when I invariably hold my breath until the sensitive surface of the film is filled with light. Through this action repeated thousands of times, the person I am, who traveled and landed on an unknown territory, can then recognize the possibility, making its way like on a negative, to finally connect to myself. Almost like a reconciliation.