Camille Lemoine, Down Tower Road15 Images
”I’ve been thinking about community recently, and what it means to belong somewhere. I consider community as something that extends beyond people: the tadpoles, moths, heather and fungi are all part of this wider network and my own personal identity. I believe the loss felt if they were to diminish would be as severe as the loss of a group of people.” Photographer Camille Lemoine’s words on her series Down Tower Road speak directly and intently to our present. Notions such as belonging, community and our relationship with the natural world currently face international political headwinds as rugged as the increasingly frequent storms buffeting the Scottish landscape where the photographer lives.
At a time of political and ecological emergency, Lemoine’s photographs are quiet, attentive meditations on moors, trees, plants and living things, fungi and humans. As a body of work, Down Tower Road serves as an example of how art reaches across constructed divides and strives to produce a shared language. ”Gaelic has a huge array of nature words that are usually very visually descriptive, for example, there are over 100 words for hill or mountain,” Lemoine explains. ”I wonder if we all had 100 words for hill and recognised the importance of each mound, would we change the way we viewed nature and stop seeing it as a single anonymous resource?” The artist’s attention to and insistence on the importance of each plant, creature and stretch of moorland is embodied in a series of works that reframe not only how we see our environment, but also ask us to reconsider our place therein.
”In these images, I wanted the human body to physically exist within the landscape’s natural folds, in a way that allows a deeper, more primal connection to unfurl. I felt that the human body was often seen amongst nature in a way that felt disconnected, resulting in a very shallow relationship. My intention was to instead show the body surrendering to its natural source,” she explains. Fuelled by the photographer’s drive to challenge our approach to the land as a site of resource, her portraits depict the human body as part of that landscape, rather than claiming dominion over it. She continues, ”I believe approaching the land with curiosity and care has become increasingly political, as it counteracts the dominant, often exploitative attitude we have toward the natural world. I feel that meaningful action follows connection, and this work is ultimately about rebuilding our bond with the land by changing the way we interact with it.”
Alongside writers like Kathleen Jamie and Nan Shepherd, land art – in particular, artists like Roni Horn, Hamish Fulton – have profoundly influenced Lemoine’s practice. Another major influence is the ‘earth-body’ artworks of Ana Mendieta. ”Although we are in some ways exploring different things, both our works are underpinned by the body, nature and the more-than-human space that exists between them,” Lemoine says.
While Mendieta offers her own body up to the lens, Lemoine instead includes friends as her stand-ins and Down Tower Road is not unlike a tapestry, a weaving together of various threads; the landscape; the people; the objects that make up her life. ”I feel particularly drawn to the images of my friend curled into a heather, and bent into the crevice of a tree,” she notes. ”Both feel very cyclical and reflective of this maternal bond with the land and how I have felt held there.” The handmade heather structure featured in this image was made by Lemoine, who studied Fashion Image at Central Saint Martins. ”Exploring the relationship between body and landscape began when I very first started photography in a direct and tactile way. I was really into styling with handmade pieces that I built using elements of the landscape around me. For example, covering my friend in goose feathers from the garden, a skirt out of blown egg shells and cardboard wings embellished with feathers. My work has since grown to be a lot more organic but you can still see the influence of this more styled approach.”
Whether the body curls under heather, enters the opening of a tree trunk or disappears into a field, what we sense from Down Tower Road is photography as an act of preservation; the image as a type of guardian, at a time in history when the threads that bind us to the non-human world are at risk of snapping entirely. Lemoine concludes. ”I’m considering my work as a way of preserving this more-than-physical connection we share with the land. As we lose land and species, it’s not just a physical loss, but an emotional and cultural one. It will be important to remember not just what these things look like, but how they made us feel.”
