portfolio
diaries | l'empreinte (the trace) | 2005 – present & future

“The subject matter does not have to be sublime in order to move us. What is essential is the gaze and the time we give to it,” Elina Brotherus tells us, and that is how I live photography, as a gesture of contemplation and affection towards the world around me, repeated over the years, a “sentimental” gaze, as Roland Barthes might say.



In L’empreinte (the trace), a solitary character is anchored in the middle of a landscape meditating the horizon. Always the same, from behind, facing the new space opening before him, he observes, he probes, he dominates, he inhabits, he belongs to the landscape and to my gaze. This “totem” model is my man, the one who shares my life and my travels. These places are those that we cross to get away , that we discover together and, like a ritual, immortalize with our dual presence, in front of and behind the lens. Not unlike tourists in front of monuments, we appropriate the unknown and capture our encounter with an instant, a décor, a light, into the memory of our love story, now our family story. The place has almost no importance, and either way can one really recognize it? It is nature, architecture, the immensity which attracts us by its beauty, its aura, and we become part of the same body, at times melting within it and disappearing. We imprint it with our human presence, visible and invisible, anonymous and timeless. No narration, these images are more like paintings suspended in time, in which I seek a balance between a silhouette and a space; they are variations of poses, of gestures, in harmony with the lines and with nature. Like Harry Callahan photographing Eleanor, these portrait-landscapes are our “intimate spaces of life,” mirror-projections of love, infinite and open onto the world.



Marilia Destot

New York, 2011.



PHOTOS COMING SOON