Nesting in the Wolf Tree
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Dates2014 - 2016
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Author
- Topics Portrait, Landscape, Fine Art
“ The Forest is a state of Mind.” Gaston BachelardNesting in the Wolf Tree is a photographic series that depicts the forest as a space of the unseen and the mysterious whose immensity engenders admiration, contemplation and fright.
The territory I chose to portray is the forest of Fontainebleau, located 60km at the south of Paris. The latter has become over the years a familiar environment, a place to which I became intimately attached, for the house in which I grew up stood at the edge of this very forest. As a child, these woods were my playground, the land of many adventures and extraordinary stories. As a teenager, they became a place of freedom and escapism away from parental authority. As for today, they are a space for introspection and peacefulness.
The series starts as a journey of wander into the woods and slowly turns into a quest for identity scattered with obstacles, singular rituals and secret hideaways. Transcended by the timelessness of the natural world, the visitor looses himself into the darkest recesses of the forest. Carried by playing and daydreaming he invests, tames and transforms its landscape in an attempt to escape the monotony of everyday life.
In this game of hide and seek between fantasy and reality the hut, the cabin, the cave, play an essential role. Natural and unruly, these constructions are part of the forest a mythical land full of mysteries and illusions. They blend into the surrounding nature, taking up the colour of the seasons until their destruction. Temporary shelters or secondary homes they guarantee a quiet and protected rest, a timeless moment away from the world which can still be contemplated without the fear of being seen.