The tawny rocks

In “Les rochers fauves”, Clément Chapillon questions the notion of isolation geographical and mental across an island space in the Aegean Sea. If the word isolated literally means "shaped like an island", we can very rightly to wonder what form time, the other, beliefs and the imagination take in this finite world bordered by infinity. For twenty years, Clément Chapillon regularly visits the island of Amorgos, located in the heart of the Greek Cyclades archipelago. With his Plaubel Makina 67 (medium format camera silver), he created a story in images that is both documentary and metaphorical about the conflicting feelings that the insularity of this rocky, arid and wild territory. The series takes its name from a passage from "The "Greece Today" by the French archaeologist and writer Gaston Deschamps, published in 1892 and part of the work is devoted to Amorgos. In this travel story, it describes the landscapes, the life of the inhabitants, the traditions local but also his work on site and his feelings, in a style lyrical and old-fashioned. These words echoed the feelings of the photographer who, starting from a single page, collected fragments of text that made meaning for him. By a work of erasure, he voluntarily crossed out the major part to leave only words and pieces of sentences appearing used as a palimpsest to try to reproduce island sensations.