Frozen Spring

This last six months have stripped time naked and beyond, it is like I could see its bones and it is vertiginous. These visual notes during a pandemic are an attempt to keep sadness at bay.

Photography has always been for me a powerful mean to fight restlessness.

I tend to find solace in the uncanny rather than in the pretty.

While the pandemic was spreading like wildfire more than ever.

I live on the countryside one hour away from Vienna and 10 minutes from the Czech/ Austrian border. During more than two months, the Iron Curtain had become impassable again after 30 years. A Europe of borders was rising from the dead while the wildest benighted conspiracy theories were to be heard.

I was free to roam around on my scooter in the vicinity, in search for inspiration. In Austria, we did not need to fill a form to justify why we were out. It did not really feel like confinement but like a slow burn dysphoric script.

Nature proved to be both comforting and unsettling. After all, the almighty coronavirus is a manifestation of nature. There have been moments of joy such as the sudden appearance at nightfall of these two fledglings or the daily observation of a dozen snails that became our companions.

When I look again at these baby birds that visited one evening, I see emblems for this feeling of biological fragility; all that perilous softness, this vulnerable beauty. We gave these young birds an old nest and it felt wonderful to be something’s protector.

This series is ongoing but I hope to soon be able to put an end to it and celebrate the eradication of the pandemic.