Like a postcard from a dystopian future, the Salton Sea is slowly drying up. Before this poisoned mirage disappears for good, I wanted to capture its ephemeral landscapes, whose disquieting and ambiguous beauty continue to fascinate me.

During the summer of 2021, British Columbia saw the effects of a heat wave and an extreme drought that led to numerous forest fires. The town of Lytton was decimated and a number of others were on high alert. We know that variations in the climate have created conditions conducive to forest fires, but are they solely responsible for such disasters?

In June 2020, a massive inferno raged north of Lac Saint-Jean (Québec) decimating 72,000 hectares of the boreal forest in Zec des Passes, a controlled harvesting zone. Fire is a normal part of forest life, but when it hits hard in forests that have not yet achieved the maturity required to regenerate, it takes hundreds of years to re-establish the original plant cover.

For over twenty years, I have lived by the shores of a river that has become polluted. I have long been observing the transformations of this stream, the changes in its ecosystems as well as the disappearance of some of the animal species that used to live in it. I wished to create a body of work that would bear witness to these man-made upheavals. Up to now, I have taken shots in various bodies of water across North America : from polluted environments to healthy ecosystems.

The Western United States has been dealing with a major drought for close to twenty years. As a result, watercourses are drying up and reserves are lower than ever. During an extended trip across the United States in 2021-2022, I began photographing rivers and dams as part of my study of the water crisis.

Le Camp de la Rivière was a protest camp on a logging road of an oil exploration site in the Gaspé area in Québec. This independent and peacefull movement began in 2017 to demand a halt to drilling. Filling the gap left by governments that have let us down, these environmental activists were fighting for a cleaner, healthier environment and a fairer society. This body of works is an acknowledgement of these citizens’ commitment, solidarity and selflessness.

This body of work examines with a critical eye how hydroelectric power has transformed the landscape of Quebec. The project pays attention to how citizens have rallied in order to defend their region and to demand better protection for their environment.

The forlorn landscapes surrounding the Salton Sea are loaded with social, political, environmental and metaphoric implications. They seem to mirror a lost America, an era in which everything seemed possible and accessible for all citizens. These strange lands give us another, unflattering image, of a nation more divided and unequal than ever.

I am in Paris’s Xth arrondissement when the events of Friday the 13th of November 2015 occur. The population is petrified, paralysed. While on a photographic mission in France, I get interested in the after effects of these attacks. I observe the reactions, I listen in on the conversations, I take pictures of what I see, often furtively.

The European Court of Human Rights is the review body for tens of thousands of citizens each year. Some of them even camp right next to it in makeshift shelters. Their presence on these premises becomes for me a more general expression of disenchantment and indignation. They seem to be telling me another story: that of Europe’s deprived, of the marginalized of the global economy we know today.

The mutation of these periurban territories is irrevocably transforming the dynamics of our communities. Farmland is giving way to a field of dwellings; what is now growing on this fertile soil is luxury houses, so-called “prestige houses” that are often termed “Monster homes”, “McMansions” or ”Starter castle”; one is entitled to wonder what they have to do with local culture.

With humour, images in this series were digitally constructed using photographs of suburban houses and model homes. With humour, this body of work is presented as an investigation into contemporary suburbs, but it also paints a portrait of our society.

These constructed panoramas draw attention to our interest in the grandiose and our ambivalent attitude towards the world: our desire to control it as well as our desire to become immersed in it.