Planet earth at night. Seeing the world from above. Everywhere mankind has transformed the landscape, illustrated by the lights of the cities shining in the dark.
Planet Earth is seen from its depths. A wild and spontaneous swinging. Instinctive. Organic.
Ce qu’il reste is not about rupture. It’s a change of perspective, a movement of come and go from one side to the other, reminding that the environment shaped and controlled by mankind is also fragile and ephemeral. Some things die, others appear. Transform. Regenerate.
Ce qu’il reste is an invitation to travel – in space, but also in time. A journey through images created with a camera. Photography itself is often considered as the medium of the ephemeral. It shows us a moment that undeniably belongs to the past, reveals our passages in a constantly changing reality, like a scar recalling our memories: a metaphor of the fragility of human existence. But it is that same medium which eventually leads the spectator to a change of perspective, showing what remains when the same spaces are left by those who once inhabited them, with their individual stories and collective memories. Far from the turmoil of men, in the silent depths of the earth, an imperturbable and majestic movement continues its slow trajectory undertaken hundreds of millions of years ago. And maybe for eternity.
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Bénédicte Blondeau was born in La Louvière, Belgium, and Lives and works in Berlin. She studied Photography at Ar.co, Lisbon, and Academy of Fine Arts, Ghent. Graduated as a Master in Applied Communication specialized in Media Education at IHECS, Brussels.
Bénédicte Blondeau’s work finds its inspiration in her immediate environment. The spaces depicted in her pictures are mostly empty and silent and could be seen as a kind of « heterotopia », a perambulation from nature to city, a way of experiencing urban spaces, a selection in and an interpretation of material, constructed and pre-orchestrated world. Corridors, halls, waiting rooms, passages create spaces of otherness in which the rules and norms of society no longer apply. Their emptiness leaves an impression on the spectator, who observes from a certain distance. Impression implying a kind of speculation, coming from what we see but also from what we imagine from it. Here and there characters emerge, fragile and uncertain, without being seen completely. The space becomes more than what is represented, inviting to wonder what happened or will happen inside, but also outside of it. The environment depicted in her images becomes like another space, real and absolutely unreal at the same time. An expanding parallel universe that finds its source in urban interiors or sometimes in nature, used to create images whose ways of interpretation contrast with the actual flow of images generated by the media in our societies.
Ce qu’il Reste is available now through XYZ Books, you can make one your own at: artbooks.xyz
To see more of Bénédicte Blondeau’s work visit — Website / Instagram.
