ARDENNE

ERIC GUGLIELMI

In January 2016, in this territory divided into several political entities, I began a photographic exploration that examines the notion of borders. Though the Ardennes stretch on all sides of the Belgian, French and Luxembourg borders, the region is one single geographic ensemble. No administrative entity covers the entire Ardennes, still a poorly defined territory. In Belgium and Luxembourg, the Ardennes territory does not officially exist. And though the Ardennes has given its name to a region in France, that region does not correspond to a true geographical reality. I walk and cross the invisible lines that pleat the Ardennes, moving without realizing it from one country to another. As I explore, I completely lose sight of the arbitrary divisions of this territory. There is no more France, no Luxembourg, no Belgium. There is nothing but immense forest. As if the alternating stride of my walking from one border to the next has interwoven a new fabric. The industrial crisis the Ardennes has suffered for several decades reveals new divide lines, fractures that are no longer simply economic divides or political rifts but have become visual with a life of their own. Industrial wastelands invaded by vegetation. Tangible traces in the landscape wherever human activity has deserted the land and the forest inexorably takes over. Rigorous compositions emerge from these deserted lands. My ceaseless journeys through these invisible enclosures have led to wider thinking about the concept of borders themselves. What is the relevance in maintaining these demarcations in an area where the industrial and economic fabric is unraveling, where the economic morass is unaffected by such political dotted lines and blithely invades all sides of the manmade barriers?