France • Born in 1968
Eden

These photographs are an ode to travel, contemplation and wonder, and they come in a very special form that is simultaneously poetic, gentle, and nostalgic. It’s hardly surprising, then, that François Fontaine, a PhD in Art History and member of the VU agency, received this year’s Leica Award for New Takes on Environmental Photography.

For the last twenty years, he has been producing chromatic series inspired by Eastern cultures. This time, he travelled across Japan from south to north, 
following the country’s springtime bloom season. From the city of Kagoshima, he traveled up the islands of Kyūshū and Honshū, reaching as far as the sacred city of Nikkō. He focused on parks, gardens, shrines, and places of pilgrimage, aiming to capture the emotions evoked by nature’s 
transformation in his images. He immersed himself in a sensory and aesthetic world that is as moving as it is thought-provoking. In Japan, nature is imbued with mystery and magic. Animals seem to emerge from a haiku or a children's tale, and the stylized, colorful plants from a Japanese print.
By sharing the ancestral custom of hanami, which consists of contemplating the beauty of flowers, mainly cherry blossoms, he allowed himself to be immersed in the softness of spring and the splendor of the blooms in order to capture nature’s elements and their details : the play of light in the foliage, the graphic shapes in the branches, the colorful textures on the waterlogged ground, and the reflections of trees on the ponds.
Prévert said that « life is a cherry, death its stone and love the cherry tree ». 
A Japanese writer once said that the cherry blossom, blooming in the spring sunshine, encapsulates the spirit of his people. François Fontaine gives us this 
ephemeral gift of nature.

JARDIN DE L'AFF

François Fontaine