Travelling inspire both our readers picks #267, Sarah Arnould and Arnaud Montagard. While one likes to explore human traces in nature, the other revisits icons from our imagination.
Sarah Arnould
“Photography is a wonderful way to capture beautiful things, beautiful moments. I like to take spontaneous and instinctive pictures. I usually represent nature, great spaces, arts and crafts… What links us to our environment, or the traces that mankind left on this space”,
Sarah Arnould tells us. This 31-year-old photographer based in Bordeaux, France, discovered photography when she went to Vietnam, 13 years ago. She has not stopped travelling, and capturing her adventures in foreign lands ever since. “I wish to highlight contemplation and silence… At a time where everything seems to be going too fast, it is important to take the time to observe, to notice the rain falling down a bus’s window, or to feel the intimacy of a sunset”, she explains. Her minimal images reveal a few treasures, found during her excursions: plants fighting the desert’s warmth, or the architectural details of an old building, for example.
© Sarah Arnould
Arnaud Montagard
From Nancy, Arnaud Montagard has worked in New York for the past five years. “I discovered the city for the first time during an internship in 2012. I was seduced by its energy. Vibrating and abundant, it became my playground”, he tells us. First interested in the dynamics of the street – the meaning of a situation, a light taken spontaneously – the photographer has evolved. “Men are not in my photos anymore, not physically anyway. But their presence can be sensed through their disappearance”, he explains. With American Icons, the artist undertook “a travel to the heart of America”, a work representing icons from our collective imagination, created by music, photography or films. “However, I did not want to captures clichés of the United States, but rather reveal what first seems mundane but triggers emotions”, he says. Inspired by Proust’s madeleine, Arnaud Montagard captures the tables of an old diner, rain streaming down the neon light of a motel, or even the lonely passenger of a mysterious train, and paints a colourful portrait of a timeless America.
© Arnaud Montagard
Cover picture: © Arnaud Montagard
