Zineland, which covers photography in print, has long crossed borders. Zines today, however intimate they may be, travel swiftly across the world, ignoring distance.
And yet, as the recent feature on Zines of the Zone attests, local roots still exist. This can be seen in the project Nature Humaine, a residency for photographers in the heart of Brenne in central France, where the selected photographer is invited to spend three months, before their project is exhibited and published by the Barcelona-based publisher Anomalas and the well-known Filigranes. (The residency has existed since 2010, and the latest call for applications is currently underway.)
The two latest projects, Le nom qui efface la couleur by Israël Arino, and Rêver les yeux ouverts by Susanna Pozzoli—as well previous winning projects by Le Vierge et le Vivace et le Bel aujourd’hui by Anne-Claire Broc’h and Gilles Pourtier in 2011, Auprès by Sarah Ritter in 2010, with last year’s resident Laetitia Donval’s project still forthcoming—all reflect the variety of the ways in which the land, the people and the interior spaces are appropriated. This bucolic region, which Georges Sand wrote about in her novels, is seen through the memories and projections of its inhabitants, using various techniques: color, black and white, square format, panorama. Sometimes documentary, always sensitive, the published projects add, year after year, image by image, to the living depiction of the region, which serves as the canvas for this contemporary and exacting form of photography. This is a project to watch.
