"In the beginning there was no fire on the planet. We then only had the heat of our breath to warm us in the winter.
Kinglet, the smallest bird on the continent, left its forest to fly very high until he caught a ray of sunshine in its beak. He brought this flame to earth to give it to humanity.
Burned on his way to the ground, the other birds gathered so that each one of them can give him a feather. Redthroat rushed towards him so much that he caught fire too. Owl was the only one to refuse. Disgraced, she did not show up during the day anymore.
The crest that Kinglet sometimes bristles – a flaming crown – reminds anyone who observes it of this primordial gift."
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“Whoever kills a kinglet will draw the heavenly fire over his house”. This superstition’s origin can be found into an ancient myth, which use to be told in the french countryside, in which fire is given to humanity by a small bird catching it in a sunbeam.
Bringing the ancient and forgotten story back to life, the photographic work can then be interpreted both as a development of the tale and as its confrontation to the contemporary world.
As fire is the most ancient ally of humanity in the shaping of landscape, and as the representation and status of the element changed through modernity to the one of a threat and enemy, “Manifestation of the myth” questions our representation of the flames. Rather than cultivating nostalgia, the observing of peasant mythology aims to look at nowadays countryside with care, and to use the traces of the old cosmology to rethink our relationship to nature.
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[Story composed from the writing of Amélie Bosquet, Eugène Rolland, et Paul Sébillot
_ Amélie Bosquet, 'La Normandie Romanesque et Merveilleuse' (Editions J. Techener, 1845);
_ Eugène Rolland, 'Faune Populaire de France. Les oiseaux sauvages.' (Maisonneuve & Cie, Paris, 1879);
_ Paul Sébillot, 'Le folklore de France, La faune' (Guimolto, Paris, 1904)]
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This photographic work has been realised in Normandy, France, in 2023 during a ten weeks art residency at 'Le champ des Impossibles'.
The exhibition project is composed of art prints, a paper publication of the myth and an audio piece including field recording and interviews (in french and not translated yet) with a farmer, an anthropologist and a ornithologist.
