Exotic landscape in the heart of the Breton countryside, the immaculate mountains of the kaolins are visible from the coast. Steep cliffs, lakes with indescribable and fascinating colours, this is the kind of postcard we would like to bring back as a souvenir from our holidays. Suddenly, at the bend of a dusty track, machines stand out in this luminous white setting.
This project on kaolin quarries was interested in the anthropisation of the landscape and how it is gradually being transformed by the mining industry. On the white clay turned over, another landscape takes shape, self-generating at different scales. In the kaolin dust, this new landscape is reborn and transforms itself constantly to the rhythm of the gigantic machines that shape the quarries.
Léonie Pondevie is a photographer born in 1996 in Angers. Graduated from the European School of Art in Brittany, she is a member of the Collectif Nouveau Document.
The work of Léonie Pondevie is concerned with anthropization, the process by which human populations transform terrestrial landscapes through industrial and agricultural activities or through urbanization. The modern landscape can be seen as a reflection of society since it bears the marks of our living. We build upon it, transform it, destroy it. Consequently, the landscape tells us much more about ourselves than about the natural world. Through photography, Léonie’s work attempts to capture fragments of the visible landscape and historical strata that make up these hybrid territories between nature and artifice. By wanderring, she documents an inventory of these spaces and offers a poetic and engaged rereading through images, ceramics, drawing and installation.”
© text and pictures by Léonie Pondevie
