“I know what it is to be tormented by the need for the infinite and the absolute. But I feel that the world only has meaning through the momentum of life. But this momentum tires quickly. We fall back, we seek to build a world that does not require effort from us, a world without movement. If I love my life as a painter so much, it is because it is both immense and very centered, because I live the life of vast nature, but I want to hold it in my hands through a very bitter and personal conquest. I have infinity within my reach, I see it, I feel it, I touch it, I feed on it and I know that I could never exhaust it. And I understand my irrepressible revolt when I see nature suppressed: my infinity is being killed.
Infinite wretch, you will think, than he who can die by the hand of man. A small thing, a very small thing: voluntary respect for nature. Fragile good will when everything pushes us to exploit it without measure.
It surprised me, then irritated me, to see that it did not seem as clear and decisive to my friends as it did to myself. However, I told myself, if I give them a pencil and ask them to reproduce an image that they think they see clearly in themselves, they will be well borrowed. They will perhaps say that they cannot draw due to lack of manual skills, that they do not have the “hand”, the “stroke of the pencil”. A pencil, however, is very easy to handle. If Leonardo da Vinci drew a perfect circle or if Japanese painters trace a hair-thin line with a brush, Renoir painted his last works with a brush attached to a hand cramped by rheumatism. I have often made sketches after hours of lying in wait, shivering and chilled, full of cramps, my hands numb. They don't know, I told myself, that learning to draw is simply learning… to see.” Excerpt from And Nature? Reflection of a painter by the Swiss naturalist Robert Hainard
The naturalist Robert Hainard and the ornithologist Paul Géroudet inspired the photographer Vincent Munier. He made his first hides around the age of 12 to approach wild animals.
Later, a horticultural worker, mason, photojournalist, he worked odd jobs to finance the purchase of photographic equipment. Encouraged by several successes in the “Wildlife Photographer of the Year” competition organized by the BBC, he decided in 2000 to devote himself exclusively to wildlife photography.
In 2022, he received the César for best documentary film for The Snow Panther co-directed with Marie Amiguet.
Vincent Munier: “Eco-anxiety is violent, because we realize to what extent our contemporaries make fun of all that and people are not affected by what we are losing.”
The news of Vincent Munier :
On the lookout From May 4, 2024 to March 9, 2025 Royal saltworks of Arc-et-Senans • Grande Rue • 25610 Arc-et-Senans
In the forest with Vincent Munier Temporary exhibition of February 16, 2024 to April 27, 2025 – Musée des Confluences
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