WILDLIFE

Wildlife is not distributed randomly. Each species finds its place where the environment offers the conditions necessary for its survival: food, of course, but also water, shelter, and space. Over time, some have remarkably adapted to environments that are sometimes extreme.

And then some animals end up embodying a territory all by themselves. The lion or the elephant immediately evokes Africa, the polar bear the vast Arctic, the ibex the high mountains… In the forests of my native Ardennes, it is the deer that reigns.

This is probably why it has held such a special place in my photography for so long.

The rutting call, from one territory to another

For many years, I photographed deers and the rut in the forests of my native Ardennes, along the banks of the Semois. Then came the desire to experience the rut elsewhere...

From one territory to another, the ritual remains the same, yet the photographic experience changes noticeably. The forest edges and clearings of the Ardennes give way to the vast moorlands of the Isle of Jura in Scotland, then to the mountains of Abruzzo in Italy, where the rut unfolds in a very different environment. Three territories, three atmospheres, three ways of experiencing and photographing the same ancestral ritual.