Aymeric Fouquez: A Quiet Eye

"This landscape looks like a secret

because the river can't be seen

from the spot where I am standing.

And there fore it is

the landscape where I most easily

would be able to do without myself.

Among there green hills and blue mountains

my person

almost feels an insult."

    - excerpt from "The River's Secret" by Hendrik Nordbrandt, translated from the Danish by John Irons

The mostly grey and white palette of Ayermic Fouquez reminds me of the Danish painter Vilhelm Hammershoi, with its silvery greys and pale colors. Unemphatic, yet memorable. Fouquez finds poetry in otherwise unremarkable common landscapes. The photographs  capture a singular instant but I sense a prolonged meditative process in Fouquez's selection of the moment. In his work the horizon is low and flat but remember that Denmark is bordered by Germany.

Born in Chateau-Thierry in France, Fouquez studied photography at l'Ecole nationale superieure in Arles. Aymeric lives in Cologne, Germany.

Image: Aymeric Fouquez, from the series Nord (North), 2006-2018, separable chromographic prints, Pompidou Center, Paris.