The mountains of Givors

Yes. There are mountains in Givors. Small ones, big ones, rocky ones, creamy ones. All it takes is opening your eyes, changing your perspective, and a little creativity. This is what photographer Fanny Vandecandelaere came to offer in July 2023 to a small group of young people aged 10 to 14 during a summer internship organized by Stimultania as part of the “Quartier d’été” program of the town of Givors. This project is a continuation of artist/public creation “Mountains” conducted a year earlier.

Fanny Vandecandelaere is a photographer and videographer, visual artist and documentarian. Graduated from the École nationale supérieure des Arts Décoratifs (ENSAD) in Paris in 2010, she lives and works in Lyon. Supported by the Galerie Les Comptoirs Arlésiens de la Jeune Photographie, his work was represented by Line Lavesque, from 2012 until 2018. “I have been developing sensitive, documentary photographic work for several years, where the human, absent, distant, off-camera, brings the landscape into existence, in its great diversity: whether it is cultivated, deformed, inhabited, destroyed, sublimated. In my images, the landscape is transfigured to show an imaginary space, experienced or crossed. My artistic commitment aims to (re)give voice, tell stories, bear witness to the changing world, take a sensitive look at people and the landscape. Creation and encounter are at the heart of my approach. I have always focused my attention and my photographic intention on the notion of landscape. I like to make the intensity of the landscape palpable. Emptiness never seems truly empty to me. I constantly project an emotional imagination within the framework of my objective. As opposed to a fictional work of staging, I prefer to capture beauty where we don't expect it, where we are no longer used to contemplating it. I capture the energy of encounters without hiding but by living the experience of the other in its universal and singular aspects.”