Francis Besson - OCEAN IMMEDIAT

Notes

This book speaks of human activities that take place on the borderlines between the earth and the oceans or the seas.

This infinitely varied reality has always fascinated me, most particularly in places where ocean, wind, rain, snow or ice conspire together to make life difficult for the inhabitants.

Among such places in the northern hemisphere, made extreme due to their latitude or climate, are Greenland, Scotland, Canada, Norway, Ireland but also such islands as the Shetlands, the Orkneys, the Faroes, the Lofotens.

From my travels and extended visits in these regions, I have brought back photographs. The choice of images presented in this book suggests the presence of the men and the women who live there and die there or who speak to us of their daily landscapes.

Confronted with the power of the elements, which make the peaceful coexistence between land and water impossible, the battle for existence which human beings carry out could appear to be desperate. So much creativity, obstinacy and abnegation compel my admiration.

Each image in this book raises to my consciousness a moment of questioning or even some astonishment that I experienced. Not one image has been left submerged in the disorder of daily living.

Each image in this book also rekindles in me the overwhelming need to revisit these lands that so fire the imagination.

Francis Besson