What if we learned to look at the invisible? An inexhaustible subject for anyone who loves the 8th art, isn’t it? “It all started with the Nièvre, whose existence I discovered late in life. It flowed through the town of my childhood before being buried alive in the late 1950s to allow the bypass of the Nationale 7 (a famous road in France),” explains Pierre Suchet, a Lyon-based photographer and explorer of several French rivers – the Nièvre, the Yzeron, the Lez, and the Furan. “In addition to sharing the same watershed, the Furan, like the Nièvre, was also buried alive.”
It is with this curious evidence that a patient investigation begins, carried out over more than two years, and punctuated by more than 200 kilometers traveled on foot. Photography here becomes a true act of research: equipped with his 4×5′ view camera, Pierre Suchet follows the traces of this tributary of the Loire, from its source at Bessat, to its confluence at Andrézieux-Bouthéon.
The experience is intuitive, guided by walking: “It would take a long time to explain why I take a photo in a certain place. Let’s just say that I’m mainly interested in the traces that man leaves in the landscape, in connection with the river,” he confides. We willingly let ourselves be guided by his poetic signs. Here a dam, there a fish pass, and always these landscapes that he shows us differently. Time slows down… We scrutinize the clues, the lines, the tenuous marks of what was.
A tool for attention
What were and are the attachments between the inhabitants and the Furan? What remains of the imprints left by the invisible? What role do rivers play in the constitution of our collective memories? “The Furan was a whole multidisciplinary team of researchers,” recalls the photographer engaged in a profound dialogue with the world of research.
At the forefront is teacher and researcher Danièle Méaux, with whom he shares several common areas: contemporary photography, ecology, representation of the territory, and the Anthropocene. Alongside them, other voices from the humanities are also questioning the river: what would be the language of the Furan? How does it manifest itself in literary narratives? Are the cleanliness of water or the hygiene of the body biopolitical strategies?
And then there are the voices of those who live alongside it without knowing it or who knew it well, like Sylvie, 90 years old: “When I was a child, the Furan changed color, depending on the day. Sometimes it was green. Other times red or blue.” Together, they poetically draw the complexity of uses and human presence. This work becomes a living archive of a little-known river. And Pierre Suchet’s photography goes beyond the act of research: it becomes a tool for attention and repair, which, while failing to reveal the invisible, invites us to look differently.
In the footsteps of the Furan, A photographic investigation, by Danièle Méaux – Pierre Suchet, is published by Filigranes Editions and available for €35.
