Some titles beckon you to follow. That’s the case with the one Matt Wilson has chosen as an invitation to his aimless wanderings through Normandy. No set destination, no compass, and certainly no GPS: with only his instincts to guide him and a carte blanche approach, he set out to capture his vision of this region as he discovered it for the first time.
Was he retracing Claude Monet’s steps when he captured The Last Light at Varengeville? In any case, he pays tribute to Jean-François Millet with Ode to Jean-François Millet, a piece that conjures the seascapes so characteristic of the Barbizon School artist. And when he loses himself in the underbrush or pauses to observe a wind-bent tree atop an ochre-tinted mound, it’s impossible not to be reminded of Corot.
It is only natural that a photographer who professes a love for classical Dutch painting and the melancholic landscapes of certain great English artists would encounter the very sources of Impressionism in Normandy. And, like Monet, he brought back his own impressions—sometimes in the early morning hours, as he hints in his rare disclosures about the time or place of his shots—yet he chose not to present them as a travel diary or a record of his journey. Instead, he has arranged them into a subtle palette that celebrates the richness of colors and textures. The sfumato that envelops his landscapes does not position him within the lineage of pictorial photography imitating painting, but rather evokes the sense that photography, by emphasizing the coherence of a unique vision, can reinvent the world and remind us to observe deeply, freely, and down to the smallest detail.
Echoing nineteenth-century photography, a small sailboat merges into the gradients of a blue boundlessness, while the swallows’ nests take on the same tones as the barn beams they were patiently built upon. The hues of ultramarine make it impossible to tell whether we are looking at a canal or the road running alongside it. Suddenly, the space becomes “Wide Open,” and we find ourselves who knows where—perhaps “Somewhere in Between” or in a “Secret Garden at Twilight,” reached by way of “The Dragon’s Path.” In this harmonious world, time has suspended itself, and mystery has quietly taken hold.
Wilson’s photographic temporality—central to his work yet resistant to precise dating—questions a past that lingers in the present, strangely surviving in eroded fragments of what once was. The thatched roofs and half-timbered, wattle-and-daub walls that persist evoke what the photographer encountered in the United States, in another rural landscape he has been exploring since 2011 for his Stateside project.
Yet even if, as always with photography, a healthy skepticism is warranted, and even if the title’s statement is softened by a welcome “maybe,” this road, unquestionably, leads to the essential: the light and the color it brings to life.
« Cette route mène sûrement quelque part, peut-être », is on display at galerie Sit Down, until November 30, 2024.
Join us for Starting Sunday: Tea-time and a meet-and-greet with Matt Wilson on Sunday, October 13, 2024, from 3 to 6 p.m.
