Photography

Selected Projects + Images
and Works in Progress

Photography by Isabelle Hayeur of a cow in a Kansas feedlot

Rumination
2024 – 2026

This body of work examines the environmental impact of large-scale industrial farming, where vast feedlots and concentrated operations reshape the landscapes of the American Midwest and Great Plains.

Photograph by Isabelle Hayeur of the "No ICE" protest in Los Angeles

Divided We Stand
2025

In June 2025, I documented protests that erupted in Los Angeles and other major U.S. cities in response to ICE raids targeting migrants.

Photography by Isabelle Hayeur of illegal migrants near the border wall in Jacumba California

Borderlands
2024 – 2025

In recent years, clandestine immigration into the United States has surged. I documented migrants crossing the wall and their arrests by Border Patrol, amid heightened tensions within a deeply divided American public.

photography by Isabelle Hayeur about the pollution at the Salton Sea in California

Fault Line
2022 – 2023

Like a haunting postcard from a dystopian future, the Salton Sea is slowly evaporating. Its salt-scorched beaches now lie buried deep under thick layers of toxic alluvial dust.

Photography by Isabelle Hayeur the Rio Grande in New Mexico

Seared Horizons
2022 – 2023

The American West was forged on myths of conquest, mastery, and turning desert into garden. Today, that myth is crumbling—sometimes spectacularly, sometimes imperceptibly—as I document landscapes and bodies of water ravaged by drought, pollution, and neglect.

Family with a flag at the People's Convoy in Adelanto California, February 2022

The deplorables
2020 – 2022

Distressed by what was happening to our society during the pandemic and lockdowns, I took part in many demonstrations in Quebec and in California.

Desert Shores photography by Isabelle Hayeur about the ghost towns around the Salton Sea in California

Desert Shores
2015 – 2016

The desolate landscapes surrounding the Salton Sea carry deep social, political, environmental, and metaphorical resonances. They evoke the image of a lost America—an era when everything once seemed possible and within reach for all.

Tremont Creek wildfire in British Columbia, Canada in 2021

Wild Times
2021

In the summer of 2021, British Columbia endured a brutal heat wave and extreme drought that sparked widespread forest fires. I traveled to the Thompson River Valley to photograph their rapid advance.

photographie par Isabelle Hayeur forêt brûlée dans le secteur de Chute-des-Passes au Québec

Land of Ashes
2020 – 2021

In June 2020, a massive inferno raged north of Lac Saint-Jean. I ventured along rough gravel roads into this unorganized territory, navigating its blackened, moonlike desert landscapes.

Photography by Isabelle Hayeur of Parlement européen Louise Weiss with a migrant encampement

Foreign Body
2012 – 2013

The legitimacy of the European Union was supposed to be based on prosperity and fairness for all. Yet today, its citizens are asked to accept greater sacrifices while globalists and multinationals reap record profits.

Artwork by Isabelle Hayeur showing a panoramic landscape created by digital photomontage

Destinations
2003 – 2004

These panoramas reflect our fascination with the grandiose and our ambivalent relationship with nature. They compel us to question how we construct our views of the land and the meanings—or preconceptions—we project onto it.

Underwater photography by Isabelle Hayeur of Spring Creek in Kansas

Troubled Waters
ongoing since 2008

Through an ongoing underwater project, I explore waters altered by pollution and human activity. The series traces ecological upheaval while highlighting the remarkable, resilient beauty that continues to flourish below.