Man has always constructed buildings, exploited nature, however he has, unless they could be rehabilitated or returned into their original state, left behind him and abandoned these modifications.
This is what allows us to discover archaeological sites still today. But you don’t need to dig down into the geological strata to discover this past of humanity, sometimes all you have to do is look around you, in the middle of the city or in the country or in a forest.
The exploration of human urbanisation is a kind of modern archaeology. How many forgotten quarries are rediscovered by accident during construction works. These places abound with traces left by man: tools, vehicles, sculptures, furniture. How many industrial or military relicts like scars intentionally forgotten are dotted over our everyday world. All these places are taken over by nature, resulting in unlikely decorations of mould, rust and other varnishes of time.
Often immersed in almost complete darkness, capturing these places is all the more difficult as you have to paint the scene with soft lighting for several minutes rather than using strong lights that distort the truth of the place and wipe out the details.
It is touching to be contacted by people who used to work or live on these sites. Reminding them of the details they had forgotten and that make resurface so many anecdotes, memories they are happy to share with me, immersing me suddenly by imagination into their world that is gone…and still there, so close, so full of activity, of human relations, social drama, which I awakened in that moment of taking the picture and maybe…saved from oblivion and indifference.
