Arles 2025 – TchabØ : The Collapse of the Giants — Chronicle of a World Like Us

I am fascinated by the random and aimless nature of our world. Everything is spinning in all directions, including humans; everything is a mixture of contradiction, ambiguity, hope and despair, joy and sadness, beauty and ugliness, creation and destruction, and continual struggle. Reality is not the same depending on your point of view; our certainties are contradictory. My overall intention is to show the contradictions and paradoxes of our struggling, torn, heartbreaking world, which has always been vacillating.

The series “The Collapse of the Giants” that I am presenting at the exhibition falls within this framework.

Faced with the collapse of life and climate change, people hesitate, refuse, or are unable to change their lifestyles. Those who try are confronted with everything they were raised to be, their habits, their passions. Those capable of radical change are a tiny minority. The others all live with this ambiguity. We try something that interests us less or that we’ve already covered, and we apologize for continuing to consume. Yet we know it won’t work. We’d like to, but “at the same time,” we don’t want to, we can’t. Even with good will and the desire to move in the same direction, everyone has a different point of view on the subject.

The series “The Collapse of the Giants” attempts to represent all of this. Through images, through the story, through the photographer’s behavior. The story of each giant presents what could happen and invites reflection. The absurdity of their story and the poetic and theatrical nature of the images are there to add a little ambiguity. We smile and we worry.

Reflections

The series “The Collapse of the Giants” is an invitation to reflect on our relationship with the world. It shows us that the collapse of life and climate change are realities that concern us all. It also shows us that, in the face of these challenges, we are all irresponsible. The series invites us to become aware of our contradictions, our hesitations, our fears. It invites us to change, but it also shows us that this change will be difficult. The ambiguity of the photographer’s behavior adds further questions to the viewer.

Absurdity and Poetry as Tools for Reflection

The absurd is a powerful tool for reflection. It allows us to see the world from a different perspective, to shed our prejudices. In the series “The Collapse of the Giants,” the absurd is used to show us that the collapse of life and climate change are realities that could be even more terrible than we imagine.

The poetic and dreamlike quality of the images adds further ambiguity and questions about the situation of the giants, and our own. Our world is both magnificent and terrible.

The Protocol
Each Giant is a reconstruction of 42 photos taken from 42 different viewpoints, at exactly the same distance, angle, and focal length. The final image measures 278x99cm with a resolution of 300dpi.

Each photograph is accompanied by a text that imagines the character’s story and an audio testimony, in which the Giant recounts what is happening to him.

Thierry Chabot