Forgotten places

 

« What’s the good of liberty if there’s no free space on the map ? »
Aldo Léopold

Only the forgotten places against which we never declared war or with whom we decided to sign a pact of peace can give rise to this extraordinary paradox of an enigmatic disorder, a great confusion, coupled with an enduring calm, a prodigious serenity; the feeling that here everything is in its place.

As an urban citizen who is moved by an idealistic and contemplative vision of nature, deeply influenced by the native tribes as well as by modern era’s pioneers such as Henry David Thoreau, Edward Abbey, Rick Bass and François Terrasson, these « forgotten places » feel my dreams, my heart and my soul.

To explore them with a camera mounted on a sturdy tripod is one of the most powerful, significant and deeply meditative experiences that I have had the privilege to experience.

This portfolio provides an overview of my wanderings in primeval and well-preserved forests in Sweden and Finland, in the Jura, in the mountain valleys of the French Pyrenees and the Vosges, in Bielorussia, Croatia, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Montenegro, Poland, Scotland, in different remote areas of the Balkans and Carpathians of Romania as well as in the temperate rainforests of the Pacific Northwest, the Tertiary Era relict subtropical Laurisilva forests of the Canary islands, cloud forests of central America and in the remotest parts of the Rwenzori mountains between Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

For me, entering into this spontaneous nature is like a journey back in time, a return to a forgotten past. Or perhaps a journey to an imaginary but nonetheless inexorable future, where nature in free evolution will have subsumed mankind...