I carried this project along with an additional team of 10 people, journalists and photographers (whose images are not included in the current portfolio but can be seen on climateheroes.org). Published in a special 15-page dossier in GEO France Magazine (December 2015), Le Monde, ELLE, Die Zeit, Le Monde des Ados, Femme Majuscule, The Optimist, and exhibited to the public at the Grand Palais during COP21 (https://vimeo.com/climateheroes/grandpalais), as well as during Itinéraires des Photographes Voyageurs in Bordeaux in 2016, the project was awarded the «COP21, Paris 2015» label by the French Minister for Sustainable Development and the Secretary General of COP21.
I like telling stories about how we live in society, and observing the consequences of our presence on our environment. Photography allows me to interact with real situations, give them a shape at the level of a person or a group, and to offer a vision, desired, imagined or sometimes even ironical.
During large-scale documentary projects (Climate Heroes) I ask about our times and how certain people can inspire us to think differently. I seek to isolate the unique detail in my subjects, the trait that can seem common, but which, brought back to the scale of the planet, takes all of its importance. In large-scale gatherings (Kumbh Mela, Burning Man) or within a crowd, I look for a way to show the personality of an individual within a group that often lessens those differences. By making the portrait of a place (Urbania), I observe the traces of our presence, I imagine what they tell about us, and question ironically what will remain from us and the landscapes shaped by our desires of accomplishment.
Inspired by literature and a genre between realism and anticipation, charged with bitter humor, disillusions about man and our time, my eyes wander on scenes that show an incongruous dimension, and sometimes an absurd narration. Passionate about astronomy, the question of our passage took a tangible form while observing our universe. This part of mystery stimulates my imagination and makes me project beyond the moment of the picture. I chose scenes in which, as in an anticipation scenario, the characters and elements that I photograph could evolve later, have a life of their own.
In my recent works, I continue to observe how men interact with landscape, how the latter can shape us, as much as how we shape our environment. I play with changes of point of view, alternating between landscape, portrait, and objects that in their turn become symbols of our identity: a trace, a metaphor for what we will leave behind.
