Myriad

"Myriad" explores our bond with nature through infrared, cyanotype, and embroidery, creating an oneiric herbarium that highlights plants’ presence in urban life and the need for balance between humanity and the natural world.

In May 2020, at the end of the COVID lockdown in France, I resumed my photography on the streets of Paris. My first walks allowed me to reconnect with the outside world from which I had been cut off during the two months I had spent in an apartment. My immediate reaction was to photograph the natural world around me, and from this initial corpus of images, a reflection on our relationship with nature in our daily lives took shape, giving rise to Myriad, a photographic study of the plant world.

To achieve a visual grammar specific to this universe, I created a dialogue between infrared and cyanotype, both of which have been used in photography to highlight and study nature. I chose infrared to reconstitute thermal radiation and translate the visual sensation of heat emitted by the plant world, and cyanotype (in homage to the herbariums of Anna Atkins, the first woman photographer) to emphasize the desire to preserve a trace of the nature that surrounds us. My decision to intervene directly with embroidery on certain photographs allowed me to explore the metaphorical dimension between the distinctive imprints of trees and the inscriptions left by passersby on their trunks.

In our cities, vegetation takes on different forms before our eyes: in parks, it is cut and planted according to our wishes; on sidewalks and other asphalted surfaces, it is allowed to grow freely; in enclosed spaces, it becomes an object of decoration. Myriad aims to recreate an oneiric herbarium in images that will revive our perception and help us become aware of the importance of balance between humans and nature in today’s world.