Ashes to Dust!

I am Dust + Time of War by Olivier Valsecchi

(2009-2012) Inspired by Ovid’s definition of Chaos – a confused mass of liquid and fog, order and disorder, light and darkness – the “Dust” (2009) and “Time of War” (2012) series, part of the “I am dust” project, are about incarnation, resurrection, rebuild what was destroyed, struggling for life.

Olivier Valsecchi was born in Paris in 1979. Revealed to the public eye in 2010 by DUST, this series earned him the prestigious Hasselblad Masters Award two years later.

Incarnation remains the main theme in Valsecchi’s oeuvre. Thus he decided to dive into his DUST series once again, whilst adding a parameter to it: a soul of their own. Deliberately choosing to set the second part of his “I AM DUST” saga in a former arms factory, this autobiographic project is on the theme of incarnation and Samsara. Whereas the first part illustrated the photographer’s cosmology, TIME OF WAR liberates those chaos-spawned creatures. Their bodies tense, each mote of muscle tissue contracts itself, shoulders heave. The primeaval ash, this very element which has transiently crossed through the cycles of life and death, seems to burst out in an explosion of effort, unless this be the final agonizing breath of these Ovidian heroes.

This is about survival. Enjoy!