Wadi Qelt, in the Stony Light is based on extensive research into the natural elements and proposes an experimental photographic study of Wadi Qelt, a valley situated in the Judaean Desert between Jerusalem and Jericho, near the Dead Sea. This territory, imbued with stories from times immemorial, marked by political tensions, menaced by exploitation of its resources, is also linked, for the artist, with the history of photography; it harbors the renowned bitumen of Judea, which, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, served as the photosensitive coating in Nicéphore Niépce’s production of his first contact prints.

The dramatic desiccation of the lake has transformed the region into a lunar zone, corroded by salt. The artist collects this salt from the desert floor and then, in her studio, uses it to fossilize her prints, lending them a sculptural quality. Both image and structural component at once, the salt solidifies the work and makes it scintillate, revealing the organic properties of the mineral, but also its hieratic beauty, evoking a landscape for contemplation but also a threatened ecosystem. Walking and gathering also form an intrinsic part of the artist’s photographic practice. They raise the question of the gaze that frames the landscape, of the hand that grasps the fragment, of the foot that treads upon the desert floor: of all these gestures, this “human scaling” determines the relationship of humanity, and the artist, to their terrain and its representation.

Excerpt from the Louis Roederer Discovery Award 2021