First Exercise: Decay

This project is an exercise based on Robert Adams’ series Summer Nights, Walking, made in a newly built residential suburb in Colorado. That development was meant to be a kind of paradise for its residents; instead, it led to the decline of the surrounding nature. Robert Adams’ remarkable series observes these places with a quiet, independent distance.

Decline has always been at the heart of my own work: the impact people have on their environment, and the damage they inflict both on nature and on themselves. For this series, I chose a copy of the Venus de Milo, the famous armless classical statue. Seen not as a work of art but as an image of a Greek goddess, today reduced to mere decoration, she became a kind of toy in my hands, a figure of despair and of the wear of time. Bringing her into this exercise allowed me to move beyond simply imitating my model.