Vendée Globe - “Reflection of Isolation and Motion” is a series of photographs started in the harbour, during the quiet days before the start of the Vendée Globe 2024. Rather than taking pictures of the yachts, I aimed the lens at the water. What attracted me was not the extravaganza of the regatta but the delicate moment just before the kickoff. The IMOCA yachts in the harbour were visible only as reflections, distorted through the tiny movements of the water surface.
Carbon masts rivaled to long, wavering lines; hulls turned into palette of color; as sponsor logos torn up became abstract shapes. Through these reflections, the well, designed yachts lost their sharpness and converted into fluid and unstable images.
In my view, this metamorphosis of images is a mirror to the paradox of the present, day ocean races. These vessels stand for technological advancements and human desires but are at the same time incarnations of the nature and depend on the wind.
To make a point about this delicate bond between technology and nature, I chose to photograph their reflections and not their bodies. That constantly moving surface of water served as both a topic and a partner in the creation of the images.
These photos show a moment of indecision the silence just before departure when desire, doubt, and our ocean condition are momentarily face to face on the surface of water. The abstractness is not something that is put together, it is a work of the sea. While the Vendée Globe represents adventure, endurance, and exploration, my reflection is also the ocean as a vulnerable environment.
