France’s Normandy coast, with its craggy coastline and medieval fishing villages, has long captured the interest of artists. Its seascapes are featured in the work of Impressionist masters Monet, Manet, and Boudin. Many pioneering photographers, such as Gustave Le Gray and Henri Le Secq, worked in the region prior to or at the same time as the early Impressionists, starting around 1850. Iconic scenes and motifs appear in both the photographs and the paintings of the period.
Impressions de Normandie was developed over a three-year period (2014-2017) as part of a resaidency with the Centre photographique de Rouen Normandie focusing on landscapes of the Normandy region. The work is a tribute to the Impressionists whose views inspire today’s tourists, and explorie the region’s ‘landscapes of leisure’, taking in beaches, festivals, commemorations and all-season fairs.
As curator of the Centre Photographique, Raphaëlle Stopin, writes “Although it might appear static to passers-by, a landscape is alive. It is the intersection of environment and humanity, the space where we experience the emotions associated with living, as a collective and as an individual. These photographs weave together a story line mixing the real and the symbolic, the cultural and the natural, the objective and the subjective.”
Read more about the commission here.