Daniel QuesneyPar les villages (Signed Edt Ltd of 30 copies)

For a long time, one of these villages in the Puy-de-Dôme has been not only the summer playground of my childhood but also, until recently, that of my photographic and landscape experiments. 

These villages in the Auvergne have been transformed as chaotically as the plant world in which I am interested: their development is just as contingent and anarchic. Here, the actions seem so uncoordinated and diverse, so learned and so brutal at the same time, that the aesthetic result may shock us to the point of making it unworthy of attention. Yet it is here that the clues to humanity are concentrated. It is also the source of a multitude of formal motifs for the photographer.

Originally rather critical of the transformations observed in these villages, my view has gradually become both more attentive and more distanced. This emotional shift has allowed me to consider these villages with the same aesthetic concerns that I have for the landscape or the plant world. Beyond the apparent disorder, there was an organism that needed to be revealed photographically.

The spatiality of these villages is of central importance. Most of them are not organised according to an orthogonal plan but rather circular, characteristic of their "medieval" origin. The resulting spaces are intimate, they form a labyrinthine setting, they carry a real theatricality. 

These villages had to be treated with respect. The square format and the off-centre nature of architectural photography corresponded well to their morphology. The need to capture the clues, the practices, the actions, imposed here the documentary use of colour. Finally, the quantity of images and the systematic nature of the shots, although not exhaustive, were similar to the obsessive practices of inventory. I considered this photographic work as much documentary as artistic.

  Daniel Quesney is a photographer and director. From 1992 to 1999, he participated in the implementation of the photographic observatory of the landscape for which he ensures the technical and artistic follow-up for the Ministry of the Environment.

Handmade hardcover with a print tipped in it, 29,5 cm x 25 cm. Epson inkjet print on Ilford matte paper. Handmade edition of 30 numbered copies signed by Daniel Quesney.