La matière du temps, landscapes in motion by Max Barrett
The same approach, turned towards landscape. The movement of the camera engraves the place rather than describing it.
The place itself does not matter. What matters is what remains once you stop trying to seize it.
Landscape without the scenery
La matière du temps (The Matter of Time) does to landscape what Avant d'oublier does to the face. The camera moves during the exposure, and the place stops being recognisable scenery: it becomes a mass, a band of colour, a density. A hill keeps its relief but loses its name. A beach comes down to three horizontal lines at dusk.
This is not a series about places. No image sets out to document a site or to give its address. What interests it is what survives of a place once you give up describing it: a light, a dominant colour, a direction in the matter.
How the images are made
The technique is a matter of gesture. During the exposure the camera is moved slowly, most often along the line of the relief, which stretches the scene into continuous streaks. Exposure times follow the available light, from a fraction of a second in daylight to several seconds at dusk.
Nothing is added in processing. The colours come from the hour and the weather rather than from a filter: images made at nightfall give those washed greys and soft browns, while an overcast sky produces whites that rise until the horizon line disappears.
The series is ongoing and grows with each new location.
Prints and acquisition
As with the other series, each image is printed once only, on Jean-Pierre Gouy's handmade hemp paper, 25 × 32 cm. High-resolution digital files are available separately, with worldwide shipping.