Jocelyn Philibert – Surréel

"These are images of trees captured at the Montreal Botanical Garden and in the countryside or on the riverside in Saint-Jean-Port-Joli. Each image presented in this book was constructed from a hundred digital photographs taken at night; it's as if I had scanned the trees and then reconstructed them on my computer screen. But I would not have undertaken this work if I had not been able to create an effect of perspective, depth, and a sense of reality. Through a questioning on representation, my interest is the real; I think in three dimensions. Before this project, nature was not one of my concerns. To my astonishment, I'm reconnecting with it - like finding a beloved place that we had forgotten. But I discover a different nature; I have the feeling that it is no longer as it was before, it seems contaminated by the unreal, or even more so, the surreal. In making these images, I couldn't help but think about genetic manipulation, cloning and other biotechnologies where natural and artificial are one and the same." (Publisher's website)