Feræ

This project takes place in wildlife care centers in France. This project focuses on this time of caring for wildlife.

For about two years, I regularly went to wildlife care centers. It is a place close to the hustle and bustle of the city. It is also deployed in a less urban environment to help prepare for an animal’s return to the wild.
In these centers, gestures are repeated and become rituals, as the hours go by. Veterinarians, trainers, volunteers, and students follow one another. Their faces watch. Their hands feed, rehabilitate, bandage and clean.
In contact with injured bodies, the space opens up for a face-to-face encounter with an animal ‘otherness’, where distances are recomposed and sometimes entirely removed. In the close proximity of this encounter with the wild animal, movements seek assurance and accuracy depending on the species. We learn to be attentive to the slight signs of an animal’s fear, watching the shelters, the linen sifting the light, the silence.
This time of care, which sees the relational boundaries with the non-domestic animal jostle and change, must be as brief as possible in order to avoid fatal stress, or, on the contrary, to impregnate the animal with too much of the human presence, a term called imprinting.
At a time when wild species and their habitats continue to constantly shrink, sensitives are trying to make themselves heard and act for wildlife. As an attempt to repair our links with the living.

These images were taken between 2020 and 2022 in the care centers of the « Faune Alfort » association (CHUV-FS ans CSERFS), and with the association of « Rémiges Noires », near Paris.

With more than seven thousand animal receptions per year, the «Faune Alfort» association, which is associated with the Alfort University Veterinary Hospital for Wildlife CHUV-FS, has become the leading care centre in France for a number of wild species. It is part of the National Network of Wildlife Care Centres. The « Remiges Noires » Association specializes in the care of black swift. While the received number of animals in distress continues to increase each year, the balance of these centres surviving thanks to donations remains extremely precarious.