Paradise
2020-2023
Exhibitions:
> Bibliothèque nationale de France
> PhotoSaintGermain
> Festival La Gacilly Photo
> Quai des Savoirs
> Promenades photographiques de Blois
> Itinéraires des Photographes Voyageurs
> Fotografia Europea
> inCadaqués
Prizes:
> Centre National des Arts Plastiques
> Prix Maison Blanche
> PassePartout Prize
> Prix LNP Special Mention, photographic film
Photographic film
“Resinotype” & Cibachrome print process below
“Paradise”, book on pre-order on Andre Frere Editions
[FR]
Les mégafeux, sous l’effet du changement climatique, n’épargnent plus aucune région de la planète. Le 8 novembre 2018, le mégafeu Camp Fire ravageait la ville de Paradise (Californie) en 4 heures, faisant 86 victimes. En 2021, le Dixie Fire se déclenchaient sous les mêmes lignes électriques des collines environnantes.
J'ai rencontré ceux qui reconstruisent leur "paradis" en un lieu désormais brutalement inhospitalier. Pour rendre compte de leurs émotions, j’emploie un film infrarouge dont les couleurs flamboyantes ponctuent la normalité ténue d’une vie qu’ils tentent de retrouver, avec la peur du prochain mégafeu au ventre.
« Paradise » est une parabole sur notre capacité à (nous) reconstruire après des incendies dont les causes sont, de façon croissante, humaines.
[EN]
Megafires spurred by climate change no longer spare any region of the globe. On November 8, 2018, the megafire Camp Fire ravaged Paradise, California, killing 86 people in 4 hours. In 2021, the Dixie Fire started under the same power lines that crisscross the hills around Paradise.
I met those who decided to rebuild their "paradise" in a place that now seems brutally inhospitable. To account for the intensity of emotion heard in my conversations with survivors, I use an infrared slide film, whose blazing colors break into the tenuous normality of their new life, flashbacks of the flames seared on their retinae as they rebuild in the shadow of the next disaster.
The tale of Paradise gives us a glimpse at the next place that will have to go through healing after a disaster whose causes are, increasingly, human.
Photographic film (7’)
“Paradise” Photographic film
Duration: 7 minutes. Special Mention of the Jury of the LNP Prize (“Les Nuits Photo”) 2021.
“Resinotypes” & Cibachrome print processes
Resinotypes created with Maison Picturale in Paris.
Novel technique based on gelatin pigment printing with natural color pigments, pine resin and ashes collected in Paradise, California.
This non-toxic process allows giving the prints the materiality of the black pinewood ashes.
Cibachrome prints created with Julie Laporte at Cadre en Seine Labo in Paris.
Cibachrome is a photographic process used for the reproduction of film transparencies on photographic paper. This paper and associated chemistry were discontinued in 2013.
In 2022, the last sheets of Cibachrome paper were available in Paris. This disappearing paper allows me to reflect on the disappearance of the town of Paradise, burnt to ashes. It was also the only paper able to print from the positive infrared film used for the series. With it, the yellows of the Kodak Aerochrome film turn out shiny gold, and reds a vibrant blood color.