EDEN or not
Ahhh, the garden,
this defined yet infinite space,
this place where I come to reclaim my artistic time,
the time of creation.
When human life pulls me into other rhythms,
pressuring me to act in this or that way,
the garden imposes the rhythm of the Cosmos.
It soothes me, calms me.
I come here to lay down my overflowing human emotions.
At the foot of the trees lie my deepest sorrows.
Nature is generous; it asks for nothing in return.
It absorbs, transforms, oxygenates, regenerates.
If I find a river, I gladly lie in its bed.
If it is a pond, I dive in, all the way to its depths.
In the city,
gardens are often public,
sheltering trees that have stood for centuries.
Some I know better than others.
Near those, I sometimes find refuge.
With the passing seasons and blooms,
I come to greet them.
If it is a gardener’s garden,
I glean the fruits of another way of thinking,
sometimes from another era,
or from unknown lands.
To me, these imagined spaces are filled with possibilities—
poetic playgrounds or infernal landscapes.
An attempt to impose order on a universe that forever eludes us,
a sketch of a bridge between origin and evolution.
When I photograph a garden,
it is the perspectives drawn by the gardener that frame my shot.
The plants, the animals, the inhabitants dictate my distance, my focus.
The light tells me when to return,
to better see the hidden side of things.
The temperature imprints colors in my mind,
which I will later develop and apply like a modern painter
on digital and paper canvases.
As for emotions—
between calm and sensuality,
they create the accident that sets everything in motion…
In the gardens of Arnaud Maurières and Eric Ossart,
one does not stroll lightly through the pathways!
The subject is thorny,
this generous nature does not give itself without pricking a little.
To find rest here, I must first prove myself.
But once I step into their perspectives, everything clears—
their vision unfolds before me.
And that is no small thing!
In my real garden lies my most secret garden—
my search for harmony.
A space in constant motion,
a metaphor and utopia of a man who, like the restlessness of the soul,
will never truly rest on his laurels…
even within a garden.
Ana BLOOM