With the polaroid series, L'île aux Oiseaux; Bird's Island (2019), I went to visit the business district of Enova-Labège to take a series of photographs of landscapes, in particular, the park with its artificial lake. While there, I collected a quantity of water from the site. This water was used in the process of removing the emulsion from the photographs. I continued this process with the works Shinrin-yoku I, and II, (both 2020), which consists of a series of images of the artificial Bordette lake found within Bouconne forest, outside of Toulouse; and again at the artificial basin at St. Férreol.
Here, the integrity of the prints are preserved, while the emulsion is progressively eroded the interaction with lake water. The toxicity of the chemicals and their interaction with microorganisms, algae, etc., attempts to pose questions that, while environmental, also examine chemical composition of the image.
I am attempting to erode, or perhaps pollute, the ‘representational nature’ of the photographic image, undermining verisimilitude in order to reveal its material reality.
Following Gustav Metzger, I became more interested in the notion of an ‘auto-destructive art’, a work of ‘process art’ that exists in a constant state of change rather than pretending to have permanent and eternal qualities; a conditional form of work that openly recognises that it exists within differing speeds of change and transformation.
