Contemplating Land/Scapes with François Moret

TLmag: How does the landscape inspire and influence your work?
François Moret: Photography embodies the impermanence of things. A photograph catches our world for just a fragment of a second. Every image is different from the previous one and the next one no matter if the subject is the ocean or a close-up of a child’s face. It is totally impossible to make the same picture twice. If you try to photograph a mountain — the symbol of stillness — the unicity of the image will reside in a subtle detail: a bird, a skier or a ray of light on a tree. It generates a contemplative state.

Why have you chosen to represent the landscape in the medium or materials that you work with?
Almost every image represents the landscape. All you have to do is choose the right focal length…

Could you describe the process of creating your works for Land/Scapes?
When I lived in Los Angeles between 2009 and 2017, I took about 50 photographs per day with my Sony RX1 or my iPhone. The light of Los Angeles is in the set of thousands of movies and consequently, part of our culture. The tough part of the process was to pick 24 images (one second of a movie) that illustrate the soul of this city where everything looks fake but is real. The title of the series — Havenhurst Drive — is taken from David Lynch’s movie ‘Mulholland Drive’ where one of the characters lives on Havenhurst Drive which is an existing street of Los Angeles but they live in a fictitious house located at 1612.

Historically, the landscape has been a key influence of many artists, do you feel a connection to them?
Not especially

Land/Scapes will be on display at Spazio Nobile until February 17, 2019