French photographers Félix Chollet and Olga du Saillant have published their first collaborative work, "Tombé du Ciel" (Fallen from the Sky), through Équator Editions. The book represents a unique artistic partnership where two very different yet complementary photographers have created a unified vision so seamless that it becomes impossible to identify which photographer captured each image.
The story unfolds like a poetic narrative where a character lands somewhere and begins to explore that place. However, this character consists of two photographers whose doubled perspective creates a broader, more expansive view. Rather than following a conventional storyline, the work embraces poetry that seems whispered from crevices and carried by winds and sea foam.
The photographers have stripped away everything superfluous - intentions, transferable narratives, and conventional travel documentation. This is neither a journey nor wandering nor escape, but rather a naked presence without imposed direction. The landscape is not contemplated as a question or memory; it simply exists. The work doesn't seek to collect debris or function as archaeology, but instead captures the timeless quality of minimal fiction.
There is no quest in this work, only acute attention. The photographers don't rush because duration exists everywhere, and they're not going anywhere specific. There are no edges to reach, no limits, no meeting points or destinations. It's described as a great march through suspended immensity, where the gaze offers itself and the world emerges from nothingness while the already-present shapes the fresh perspective in a continuous loop.
This creates a silent but presence-charged exchange between what is seen and who sees. The place has no name or defined contours, yet it calls to be traversed. It's an imaginary place where the weather is always beautiful - not in a postcard sense, but in an aesthetic one. The location may well be an island, though it's not catalogued or marked on any map. It exists only through these images, born from a process of photographic sedimentation.
According to art critic Jeanne Borensztajn's analysis, materials in suspension precipitate and deposits form the image, like photography created through accumulation of elements from disintegration and dissolution of rocks, transported and deposited by waters and winds. The omnipresent white noise represents waters and winds in movement, while the concrete matter of the photograph constitutes everything else in this visible territory.
The images blur the line between aerial and microscopic views, between geoglyphs and imprints of delicate trembling twigs. Sand, composed of particles from shells, rocks, glass, plastic, magma, and oxides, exists in perpetual recomposition. It takes the form of circles and mounds, pleats into wet drapery, becomes an extended woman or the back of an immense beast, functioning like language itself.
Sometimes the images appear so dry and stratified that viewers feel they could detach pieces and crumble them, or disperse fine surface dust by blowing on it, or transform the design by adding hand movement. Other times the images seem nourished with water and begin to gleam, appearing to change state according to atmospheric conditions.
The photographers explain that their collaboration began with their meeting three years ago. "Fallen from the Sky" serves as an ode to works created by the dance between the Atlantic Ocean and its bordering coastline. The work developed spontaneously and came to life during their first exhibition, "The Wind is the Double of the Horizon." Each viewer's perspective helped them gradually measure the work's scope.
They now understand that this series explores the meeting between Mandelbrot's mathematics and total abstraction - two extremes viewed through a double perspective. Despite their differences, they venture to opposite ends of vast sandy expanses without consultation, always returning amazed by the correspondence between their film rolls.
These photographs emerge from patient and humble observation, with the photographers serving as witnesses and interpreters. They allow themselves to be guided by fragile compositions that they aim to reveal with accuracy and respect. Their goal is to capture the tableaux that the ocean deposits on sand, following the rhythm of tides, winds, and seasons.
These moving, ephemeral forms resemble canvases offered and immediately erased by waves. Sand grains, like pigments from mountains, oceans, and sky, settle to compose unique works. The book "Fallen from the Sky" gathers traces of these constantly invented and erased natural paintings so they can be contemplated, transmitted, and shared.
Excerpts of modern and surrealist poetry accompany the photographs, breathing thoughts without revealing everything. These texts, like the images, possess abstract and organic character. The book represents three years of work and love, published alongside the second exhibition installment also titled "Fallen from the Sky."
The limited edition book spans 112 pages with dimensions of 245 x 300 x 12 mm and is available online. The collaboration showcases how two distinct artistic visions can merge into a singular, powerful statement about the intersection of nature, time, and human observation.
