Photographer Eve Campestrini has spent the past three years documenting an innovative agricultural experiment in France's Drôme region through her photographic series "Feral Gleams." The project explores the intersection between human activity and wild nature in a remote mountain village where a collective of farmers is reimagining traditional agriculture.
The setting for Campestrini's work is a secluded valley accessible by a winding mountain road, where slopes glow with yellow juniper and vultures spiral overhead amid the summer heat. For approximately ten years, a farming collective in this village has been experimenting with agricultural practices that honor what they call the "memory of streams and the growl of wolves" – essentially working with rather than against the natural ecosystem.
The farmers operate on the principle that each territory possesses its own psyche, or genius loci, representing the sum of all elements and presences that compose it. Drawing inspiration from symbiosis and mutual aid principles that govern natural ecosystems, the collective seeks to create new relationships between domestic and wild spaces, as well as between technology and organic processes. Their approach represents a complex and inventive response to what they view as impending environmental chaos.
Campestrini's photographic documentation reveals how this ancient practice of agriculture can create what she describes as "enchantment." Through intimate connections with non-domesticated creatures – whether furred, feathered, or plant life – human gestures and thinking become hybrid. This process creates an invitation for people to offer their bodies and imaginations to these enigmatic beings, which carry their own unique perceptions of reality.
The photographer has been regularly settling in the village for three years, allowing the place to envelop her and guide her toward the contact zone between self and inhabited environment. Her "Feral Gleams" series seeks to capture sensitive experiences through encounters with shadows and less visible elements. Using various photographic tools including trap cameras, Campestrini searches for physical traces of these connections between human and non-human worlds.
The resulting body of work alternates between aesthetic, figurative, and abstract images, suggesting relationships between different forms of existence while questioning our physical and psychological connections to territory. The narrative gradually creates tension between apparent and hidden dimensions of rural life. Campestrini notes that her vision is not entirely accurate, existing in suspended, twilight-like time where images possess evocative power to suggest new rituals and perceptions of everyday life.
Through her lens, moments occasionally waver and allow glimpses of wonder to emerge. The series ultimately challenges viewers to reconsider the stories that have shaped how modern societies inhabit the world, demonstrating how agricultural practices can serve as a bridge between human civilization and the wild landscape that surrounds it.
