PARADISE

ART & ECONOMIE -  ART FABER PHOTOGRAPHIE - ENVIRONNEMENT- HOMO FABER - CRISE ECOLOGIQUE - ANTHROPOCENE - USA- CALIFORNIE - 

Ouvrage photographique de Maxime Riché, préface de Michel Poivert,
avec le soutien du Lab. Arts, Economies, Droit - Université Paris Panthéon Assas.

Photographic work by Maxime Riché,  preface by Michel Poivert,
with the support of the Lab. Arts, Economies, Droit - University Paris Panthéon Assas.

"On November 8, 2018, the megafire Camp Fire ravaged Paradise, California, killing 86 people in 4 hours. In 2021, the Dixie Fire started under the same power lines that crisscross the hills around Paradise. Caused at dawn by a short-circuit on an almost century-old Pacific Gas & Electric electricity pylon, the flames spread across this Sierra Nevada high plateau under the effect of strong winds, heat and abundant dry vegetation.

I met those who decided to rebuild their "paradise" in a place that now seems brutally inhospitable. To account for the intensity of emotion heard in my conversations with survivors, I use an infrared slide film, whose blazing colors break into the tenuous normality of their new life, flashbacks of the flames seared on their retinae as they rebuild in the shadow of the next disaster.

The tale of Paradise gives us a glimpse at the next place that will have to go through healing after a disaster whose causes are, increasingly, human. 

Homo faber and his destiny ! "

Maxime Riché (b. 1982, France) is a Photographer & Director .Engineering graduate from  École Centrale Lyon (France), Columbia University (New York) and Cambridge University (UK), Member of the Art faber Collective. 

His work revolves around a central question: how do we, as human beings, inhabit the world? In a line of work he defines as “speculative documentary”, he thus deals with our ability to adapt to the upheavals of our environment.

He is the winner of Prix Maison Blanche, Passe-Partout Prize, Fotografia Europea, a grantee of the French National Center for the Arts (Cnap), finalist for Prix BMW ArtMakers, Prix Swiss Life à 4 mains and Grand Prix Vevey, and twice Prix Pictet nominee. 

https://maximeriche.com/

https://www.andrefrereditions.com/livres/photographie/paradise/