Hervé Charles

Since his early work in the 1990s, Hervé Charles (born 1965, Nivelles) has focused on the terrestrial environment and its trans­for­ma­tions, while remaining sensitive to questions concerning his medium, photography, and the challenges of image production. From the outset of his career, he made his mark with a series of cloud photographs taken from very close range using a small leisure aircraft. This initial series already shows a genuine ability to capture a world in perpetual trans­for­ma­tion through the sheer power of synecdoche, a skilful framing which isolates a fragment that expresses the whole. Printed in black and white on circular glass formats, with images on both sides, this series demands a real effort of attention to grasp all its visual subtleties.

Later, moving to colour, the artist developed several series, turning this same intense focus towards envi­ron­men­tal upheavals. He has traversed major volcanoes to capture their ruddy glowing fissures, like so many wounds inflicted on the Earth. Adapting format and medium according to the themes observed, he has turned his lens to oil spills, forest fires, storm damage, mining exploita­tion, and more. Though not a ret­ro­spec­tive, the exhibition puts older works into perspective alongside his latest photographs, emphasising the consistency of his attentive gaze on the state of the Earth and the repeated precision of his various artistic expressions.