Photography — Arnaud Caron

Macropraia

MaterialsUnretouched photograph

Dimensions40 × 60 cm

‘Macropraia’ turns a tiny fragment of beach into an almost monumental landscape. Photographed at very close range, grains of sand become crystals, rocks and reliefs, blurring our perception of scale. At the centre of this mineral universe appears a microplastic. This piece of waste, insignificant at the scale of a beach, becomes here the focal point of the image: what we barely notice anymore becomes impossible to ignore.

By bringing the gaze this close, the work reveals a paradox: the more intimately we observe nature, the more we discover the trace of humanity within it.

Paradise Burns

MaterialsUnretouched photographs

Dimensions40 × 40 cm

‘Paradise Burns’ stages, in three photographs, the transformation of a fragment of nature: before, during and after its destruction by fire. Flowers, leaves and twigs first compose a miniature, fragile and ephemeral paradise, before being consumed and reduced to ashes.

Through this simple gesture, the series can be read as a metaphor for our relationship with nature and, more broadly, for the environmental crisis.

Fire, however, holds an essential ambiguity: destructive, it can also take part in nature’s cycles of regeneration. The work thus leaves a question hanging after the last photograph: can something still be born from this paradise reduced to ashes?

Astral Sea

MaterialsUnretouched photograph

Dimensions70 × 50 cm

‘Astral Sea’ turns a close-up view of the sea into a cosmic landscape. The liquid surface becomes a sky, while the bubbles take on the appearance of planets floating in a boundless space.

The title deliberately maintains this ambiguity between two infinities: that of the ocean and that of the cosmos. The photograph thus brings together seemingly opposite worlds and invites the eye to lose its bearings.

By abolishing the boundaries between sea and sky, between the infinitesimal and the cosmic, the work suggests that infinity can reveal itself in the smallest forms of matter.

Sand Composes

MaterialsUnretouched photograph

Dimensions80 × 50 cm

Through the action of rain and wind, nature composes an abstract landscape in the sand. Photographed at very close range, it loses its sense of scale: its lines, curves and strata evoke in turn reliefs, valleys, or a territory seen from the sky. A few shifting grains are enough to bring forth an entire landscape.

The title places sand at the heart of the creative process. The artistic gesture then lies in the ability to recognise a work where an ordinary eye would see only a plain surface of sand.

Art is in nature!