Lost Lands is a series of beautiful mountains by Maxime Daviron. “Trying to transcribe what I feel even more than what I see, this is the starting point of the series “Terres Perdues”. Maxime tells us.
At the heart of these strange vastnesses that are the beautiful mountains, the feelings which cross us have nothing in common with those we experience in our daily lives. Something primitive emanates from these raw rocks, creating an almost spiritual atmosphere.
“My inspirations come from music and cinema and they are the most important. I can also mention H.D. Thoreau’s “Ktaadn” or – among others – H.P. Lovecraft’s “At the Mountains of Madness”; and of course the strong visual influence of the painters William Turner, David Friedrich; and the chiaroscuro movement, transposed to a wild universe.”
The idea is also to create a “world”, a fictional universe based on visions of ours, like a window on elsewhere, or on another time. I voluntarily exclude all human traces, to evoke an ancestral Earth, such as it could be before the advent of our species and the Anthropocene, which marked and deeply transformed it.
Paradoxically, I also like to conceive of it as a decor or a painting where could project oneself. This is an invitation to travel, to let the spectator mind wander through the immensities.
These photographs were taken in France, Spain, United States and Canada; but many other places are planned specifically for this series. The Himalayas and Karakoram at the top of the list, but also more remote places in the Far North or the Antarctic, and generally most of the mountains on the surface of the globe. This is a very long-term work. It started back in 2012 and probably will not end for many years if it stops one day.” Maxime tells ShutYourAperture.com
You can find more of Maxime’s work on his website, Facebook, and Instagram.