Art Gallery
Nathalie HOUDIN
Pen holder
“Porte-plumes” is my hymn to birds, to their grace, their lightness, their intelligence and their fragility. In France, populations of birds living in agricultural areas have lost a third of their numbers over the past twenty years. 420 million birds have disappeared in less than thirty years in Europe. Globally, one in eight species is threatened. Pesticides, climate change, hunting ... the consequences of human activities on the environment are one of the main reasons for their decline.
I wanted to pay tribute to the essential presence of these magnificent winged creatures with clean, creative and graphic photographs. The choice of black and white reinforced this desire to go to the essentials, and to sublimate these birds dear to my heart in their environment or their intimacy.
Nathalie Houdin
Photography is for me a passion and a commitment to nature. A need to get away from modern life to come back to more essential and real things. A desire to share, through my images, this beauty that we find all around us. In order to bear witness to its strengths and weaknesses, and to draw attention to the urgent need to safeguard our roots and our heritage.
My work is also based on the production of conservation reports focused on the relationship between Man and nature which is so dear to my heart. “It is a sad thing to think that Nature speaks and that mankind does not listen to her. »Victor Hugo. Being one of his spokespersons is one of my greatest motivations.
Florence Devaux-Dabenoc
I love to explore many areas of photography.
What I like is to try to look at the world around me differently, to compose with the light, the atmospheres, the framing, the movement,
to identify attitudes, pictorial details, to flirt with the abstract sometimes, in a word to CREATE.
I have a particular affection and attraction for black and white. I find that it allows to go to the essential, to give another dimension to the image and often to exacerbate the graphics.
But whatever technique you choose, the essential is elsewhere. The key word is emotion.
And when I manage to convey the one I felt or the one that the viewer will appropriate by looking at the image,
it is very fulfilling!
" Je m'habille en Praha "
Comment ne pas tomber sous le charme de Prague, capitale de la République Tchèque et de la région historique de Bohême ? André Breton faisait de cette ville "la capitale magique de l’Europe ". C’est en effet une ville empreinte de magie, non seulement par la présence légendaire des alchimistes au XVIe siècle, mais surtout par la trace de plusieurs cultures qui se sont entremêlées en ses murs. Blottie dans les méandres de la Vltava, tour à tour ville royale, cité impériale, bourgade provinciale assoupie puis capitale renaissante d’un État moderne, Prague a cumulé au fil du temps les strates successives d'un patrimoine architectural et artistique incomparable. La ville, avec plus d’un million d’habitants, est également connue comme “La Ville aux Cent Clochers”.
Visiter Prague revient à découvrir le décor d’un conte de fées. Les rues semblent avoir été créées pour le simple plaisir des sens. L’atmosphère médiévale qui enveloppe la ville est capable de faire remonter ses visiteurs dans le temps. Une chose est sûre, cette sublime ville est très inspirante !
"WATER SKETCHES ...
The secret alliance between photography and painting. "
Water, with its mysteriously curved waves and chimerical reflections, magically paints ever-changing shapes of dragons, witches, animals, faces or anything else our fertile minds can detect.
Each image will let your imagination wander into distant paths offering you the infinite possibility of discovering new worlds both known and forgotten.
The photographs in this exhibition were all taken in rivers, mainly in the mountains. The crystalline waters thus allow, throughout the different seasons, to find varied forms and colours, changing with the frank or soft, bright or more pastel light of a summer evening or a winter morning.
Through these images, I wish to share with you an aspect of photographic art that allows a journey into the imagination and leaves the visitor the possibility of expressing his own universe.
