As part of the Transition, Social Landscape Project, Alain Willaume was invited to reflect on threats related to shale gas exploitation projects in the Karoo desert region of South Africa. Echoing this uncertain future, he invents an evanescent metaphor and interrogates a land haunted by suspicions and anxieties emanating from the inhabitants met by the wayside. His images – whose rich halftones knowingly hold neither black nor white – resonate echoes of an intensely actual environmental threat, and in doing so, sing the infinite grace of a now reprieved landscape.
Series produced by the Rencontres D’Arles and the Market Photo Workshop of Johannesburg as part of the 2012 France-South Africa photographic mission.
Alain Willaume
He was born in 1956, in Saverne.
Far from any documentary concept, the work of Alain Willaume is inhabited by metaphor. Experimenter of forms, he develops work in direct contact with the world. Away from the main stream, he invents a singular mapping made of enigmatic and engaged images that blend the violence and the vulnerability of the world and the humans who inhabit it.
1979 Winner of Prix Kodak de la critique photographique.
1990 He met Anne Testut.
1991-1995 Road trip across Europe with truck. Publication of Voyage en Extrême-Europe, Edition of l’Imprimeur, Paris.
2003 Exhibition « Bords du gouffre » at Rencontres d’Arles and publication of the book Eponyme by Textuel Edition, Paris.
2007 He is curator of India Project in part of Rencontres d’Arles.
2010 He joins Tendance Floue.
2011 Exhibition « de Échos de la poussière et de la fracturation » at Rencontres d’Arles.
