All images by Benoit Paillé. Used with Creative Commons permission.
Landscape photography is usually about capturing the beauty of nature and the vastness of the world around us. Still, there are some approaches to this genre that challenge how we perceive our relationship and interaction with these natural spaces. Montreal-based fine art photographer Benoit Paillé, for example, had a bright idea to investigate the conventions of landscapes by introducing a light installation into the spaces he photographed.
The idea for the project, which Benoit titled Alternatives Landscapes, all began in 2011 with a simple concept of “hanging out decorations in weird places.” First, he used 100 Christmas lights over a one meter square, then switched it with a light plastic square that held 300 LED lights linked to a dimmer. He tied the installation to trees using fishing lines, creating the illusion of a floating light source.
With this installation, his idea evolved into creating images that explore how a “human element forms a relationship with nature and helps it to be reborn.” The effect is unexpectedly surreal. As a viewer, you might find yourself asking, why is this floating box of light interrupting this scene or space? What is it supposed to represent? It looks eerily like a gateway to another world, but for Benoit, it’s some sort of a symbolic reference to creation, a blank “canvas” or “empty space that needs to be inhabited.”
While his idea for a photography project involved a poetic component designed to trigger an emotional response, Benoit also understood that he needed to keep the original landscape as undisturbed as possible. He believes this maximizes the relationship between the installation and the mood of the night.
In the end, Benoit saw Alternatives Landscapes as something that mirrored his opinion on what photography does. “I think that photography doesn’t represent reality, but creates it… These alternative landscapes offer a new reading of the potential nature of landscape, of its conventional forms and its given beauty, simplicity or magnificence…I wanted to create something that wasn’t really a landscape but rather something engineered, so as to move the viewer in a different way.”
To see more of Alternatives Landscapes and his other photography projects, visit Benoit Paillé’s website and Behance portfolio.
