Golden future
With the idea that western civilization would transform water into gold if it could, and would do so until the very last drop, even if it would mean the end of us, Golden Future reflects on an extractivist society, replacing natural elements such as water, air and rocks with gold. Taking some artistic liberty, in some works, the application of gold took a more aesthetic turn. After all, beauty is also a symbol of hope and resistance.
Golden Future IV
France is home to many canyons, carved into the sun-baked hinterlands of the south. Shaped and sustained by flowing water, the rivers that created these ancient formations are drying up, victims of rising temperatures, vanishing rains and disappearing glaciers.
This photograph, taken in 2018 in the Lubéron region, captures one such place. The water, nature’s life force, replaced with the false glint of value.
Edition: 1/1
Paper: Hahnemuhle Ultra Smooth Fine Art paper
Size: A4
Location: Lubéron, France
Golden FUTURE II
Where the Pyrénées dive into the Mediterranean Sea, the salty waves, carried by the strong Tramontane winds, crash onto the dark rocks. The birth of a Catalan Venus.
Edition: 1/1
Paper: Hahnemuhle Ultra Smooth Fine Art paper
Size: A4
Location: Seaside, Banyuls-sur-Mer, France
GOLDEN FUTURE IX
Industrial ruins stand as monuments to our hunger for extraction. When the resources dry up, capital moves on, abandoning these structures in the lanscape, slowly rotting away.
This photograph was taken inside an abandoned gasometer, near Charleroi, Belgium. The golden rings added to the ceiling echo the aureoles found in religious iconography.
The work reflects on how the structures we build in pursuit of profit often outgrow us, becoming so large that their consequences escape us.
Edition: 1/1
Paper: Hahnemuhle Ultra Smooth Fine Art paper
Size: A4
Location: Abandoned gasometer, Charleroi, Belgium
Golden FUTURE V
The foam at her feet glimmers. Gold emerges from the waves.
Edition: 1/1
Paper: Hahnemuhle Ultra Smooth Fine Art paper
Size: A4
Location: Seaside, Banyuls-sur-Mer, France
GOLDEN FUTURE X
Our ancient forests are disappearing. In much of Western Europe, centuries-old trees are rare, and untouched groves rarer still. This photograph was taken in one of France’s older woodlands, where the trees bend and twist like bodies remembering another time. Behind the forest: a golden sky.
Edition: 1/1
Paper: Hahnemuhle Ultra Smooth Fine Art paper
Size: A4
Location: Bibracte, France
GOLDEN FUTURE VII
Where there was water, there is now gold. In this image, the sea, a symbol of endlessness and the origin of life, has been replaced by a flat, golden surface. In the physical print, this surface reflects light as the ocean would, seducing the eye while masking the absence it represents.
Edition: 1/1
Paper: Hahnemuhle Ultra Smooth Fine Art paper
Size: A4
Location: Seaside, Banyuls-sur-Mer, France
GOLDEN FUTURE XI
A single gilded fracture replaces part of the bridge’s arch, symbolizing how our built world rests upon the invisible spoils of extraction. The body leans against this seam, caught between the glory of civilization and the weight of its unseen cost, reaching up to the wealth, which becomes unattainable for a growing group of people.
Edition: 1/1
Paper: Hahnemuhle Ultra Smooth Fine Art paper
Size: A2
Location: Pont Neuf, Paris, France
Golden Future XII
Humanity is at the mercy of the skies. When we exchange the true value of nature for the fiction of monetary wealth, we do more than distort meaning; we surrender to a fragile, dangerous illusion.
In this image, the sky has been transformed into gold. No longer a source of light or breath, but a heavy, glimmering weight. It evokes the dense, suffocating air of heatwaves, now more frequent and violent. What once offered life now threatens it. The atmosphere itself becomes a weight to suffer.
Edition: 1/1
Paper: Hahnemuhle Ultra Smooth Fine Art paper
Size: A2
Location: Seaside, Port Vendres, France