LES MONTS BRÛLÈS FR/ENG
« Je sais bien que si je revenais dans le Nord, j’y verrais plus clair qu’auparavant. » — Letter from Van Gogh to his brother Théo.
My face pressed against the warm glass, the flat horizon gliding by seamlessly, until that mountain appears.
Jet black, rocky, and dry, it rises there in the middle of the horizon.
Soon, nothing will remain but the heat, but the light. When the glare takes over, when everything is bathed in a great white light. When the mountains have burned, the skin parched and furrowed.
That skin, my brother’s skin, which I have always photographed, burned and dried out. With its crevices and glowing ridges.
This rupture in the landscape, built through the sweat and blood of miners, bearing the remnants of all their bodies, all their deaths. A symbol of the end of an industry, of the socioeconomic despair that followed. Of the ecological questions raised by the end of coal exploitation.
Along its steep slopes, I let my gaze wander over a new landscape.
« Je sais bien que si je revenais dans le Nord, j’y verrais plus clair qu’auparavant. » — Letter from Van Gogh to his brother Théo.
My face pressed against the warm glass, the flat horizon gliding by seamlessly, until that mountain appears.
Jet black, rocky, and dry, it rises there in the middle of the horizon.
Soon, nothing will remain but the heat, but the light. When the glare takes over, when everything is bathed in a great white light. When the mountains have burned, the skin parched and furrowed.
That skin, my brother’s skin, which I have always photographed, burned and dried out. With its crevices and glowing ridges.
This rupture in the landscape, built through the sweat and blood of miners, bearing the remnants of all their bodies, all their deaths. A symbol of the end of an industry, of the socioeconomic despair that followed. Of the ecological questions raised by the end of coal exploitation.
Along its steep slopes, I let my gaze wander over a new landscape.
C-Print/BW analog print & various photo process
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