Today, we’re featuring a wonderful photo project from film photographer Jean-Luc Feixa. Jean-Luc captured landscapes of his youth in the series HUNT. Scroll below to view the images and read more from Jean-Luc about creating this photo project.
Analog cameras and films used: Hasselblad 501 CM (Find on eBay) | Ilford B&W Film (Find on Amazon)
Connect with Jean-Luc: Website | Instagram
HUNT
A Photo Essay by Jean-Luc Feixa
Everyone has a Proust’s Madeleine, something that takes them back to their childhood. For me, it looks like a hilly landscape that, little by little, is being nibbled away by gluttonous quarries.
This area is three square kilometers. It’s not much, but enough to keep a lot of memories of my youth.
First of all, there are these fields, carpeted with grey and green shades, stretching as far as the eye can see and which, in the right season, see the corn stalks rising towards the azure sky.
You have to get lost in this labyrinth, to hear the ears of corn cracking under the wet soles, to catch your breath in the morning mist… These grounds have a particular perfume which, on cold winter days, reminds me of the time when, as a child, I used to accompany my uncle to hunt partridges.
Here and there, trees, sometimes lined up in rows, sometimes solitary, hang over the expanses and draw baroque shapes in the fog.
Then, there is the view of the Pyrenees, unique and grandiose. At home, the horizon is closed. It is not like in the United States where the roads go on forever. No. I grew up with these mountains in front of me, protective barriers and jealous guardians of the rain clouds. The sight, the smell, the touch of the earth, this fertile land soaked to the bone by the jolts of the Garonne. Everything grows here; it is a granary where the crops of men delight game, rodents, and birds.
To walk these three kilometers is finally to immerse oneself in a concert of buzzards’ cries mixed with the song of the bright hoopoe bird, and rhythm of frightened hares galloping. As a regular visitor to the city, I try as often as possible to give my ears the pleasure of this sweet melody.
Swirling during the day, it sounds at a slow tempo at night, alternating with a heavy, almost palpable silence. I particularly appreciate these hours when, guided by the light of the moon, I wander on these paths.
“Hunt” is a faithful portrait of this archipelago, a playground for my childhood memories, and a landscape of choice for stories in the making.
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