As an active member of the LUX network, a ppr oc he took part in the association's very first group exhibition, inviting the artist Sylvie Bonnot↗︎. This first-ever event brought together the network's 23 festivals and fairs to celebrate the diversity of the photographic scene, and reinforces the synergy between the structures dedicated to photography in France.

Sylvie Bonnot surveys forests from Guyana to Burgundy, and bears witness to the changes caused by climate change in these natural spaces.
The artist is also the daughter of a forester. This intimate connection was rekindled when a storm destroyed her family's forest at the end of 2019. She had just returned from a trip to the ends of the earth, to the arid Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, the launch site for the legendary Soyuz satellite launcher, the jewel in the crown of the Soviet space age. A technological universe, lulled by the imperial desire for a conquest still beyond human reach, light years away from a forest on the ground. And yet the forest would return...

Sylvie Bonnot has followed the work of foresters in the upkeep and surveillance of Burgundy's forests, in her native land and then in several French regions (Burgundy, Rhône, Savoie, Guyana).
Trees, men and women, machines and the transformation of forests... Walking, pruning, transforming, observing, understanding... The revelation of a world intimately linked to his family history, but left at a distance by the desire for other futures. This is how the forestry adventure became part of the space odyssey.

In the Kazakh steppe, it had tracked down the presence of a past greatness, of a mythology of the conquest of space then in decline. The next logical step was to discover the Guiana Space Centre in Kourou in 2022, as part of the CNES Space Observatory's off-site residency programme. After the aridity, the Guiana Amazon: the so-called primary forest, the dampness, the disturbing strangeness of the fascinating submerged canopy, the daily struggle of man against vegetation that threatens to engulf him.

Humanity and its vain dreams of Elsewhere, the resilience of forests in the face of climate change and the destructive actions of mankind: two struggles for survival,
Two utopias that create imaginary worlds, real and mental landscapes that Sylvie Bonnot brings out of the photographic material.

The ‘moulting’ process, which involves delicately peeling away the silver membrane from the prints and then transposing the gelatine to other supports, crystallises a shivering landscape. The viewer is immersed in the material: trees become wood again, machines reveal their animality, and archives of human activity are transformed into poetic objects. 

Hélène Jagot, Director of Tours Museum and Château

The exhibition is accompanied by the book "L'Arbre-machine - un monde en mue", recently published by Éditions Loco, 2024.

This proposal is a conversation in continuity with the exhibition "Décoller, Atterrir" presented in 2024 at the Château de Tours, and in echoes of the exhibition "UNIQUE, Beyond Photography" at the Hangar in Brussels (2024). 
In collaboration with : Hangar, Musée et Château de Tours, Musée Nicéphore Niépce, Interface, Picto.

The Réseau LUX association is a national professional network of festivals and fairs working to promote, transmit and enhance photography. The aim of the LUX Network is to bring together a wide range of events with rich and varied programming around a shared energy and commitment. The LUX network brings together festivals and fairs of different scale, scope, territory and means that wish to unite around photography and the place of the image in contemporary issues. The LUX Network helps its members to become more professional, to enhance the value of their activities and to represent the diversity of their professions, facilitating links between the various members in order to put in place a genuine policy of cooperation and solidarity. 

Réseau LUX ↗︎