Material Territories - Écorce - At the Edge of Rupture

This series was shot in the olive groves of Cimiez, in Nice.
Each image pairs two photographs of the same tree, a colour image above, its black-and-white counterpart below. Joined along one horizontal line, they read as connected while staying slightly apart, as if each showed a different side of the same place.
I keep coming back to these trees. Their bark changes slowly, marked by growth, weather, time. The more I photograph them, the more they suggest unexpected links to the human body, folds, fractures and textures that echo skin without ever turning into a metaphor.
The back-and-forth between colour and black-and-white is part of that exploration. Instead of separating two versions of the same subject, it lets different ways of seeing the same surface sit side by side.
Écorce is less a study of olive trees than of what time leaves on living matter. The photographs stay rooted in observation, while leaving room for each viewer to draw their own connections.

Developed within the Unclearpicture collaboration with writer Michaël Koswil

Diptych of an olive tree in the Cimiez grove, pairing a muted colour view with a black-and-white study of its trunk and roots.
Paired colour and black-and-white photographs of a gnarled olive tree standing among grass and distant trees.
Diptych of two olive trunks in a quiet grove, joined across a horizontal line between colour and monochrome.
Close study of an olive tree base and exposed roots, paired with a darker black-and-white view of the same living surface.
Colour and black-and-white views of an aged olive trunk whose fissured bark records growth, weather and time.
Diptych of a twisting olive tree, its rough trunk and branching form repeated in muted colour and monochrome.
An olive tree with broad roots anchors a paired photograph that shifts from warm colour to a darker black-and-white landscape.
Paired views of a hollowed olive trunk and dense roots, revealing folds, fractures and cavities in weathered wood.
An olive tree stands in a Mediterranean grove, photographed in colour above and black-and-white below as two connected observations.
Diptych of an old olive tree beneath a dense canopy, where bark, roots and shadow move between colour and monochrome.
Using Format