Through atmospheric and scientific photography, Maewenn Bourcelot tells the “tragic story” of the decline of pollinators

Photographer Maewenn Bourcelot creates and always has created, entirely instinctively. From the moment her parents (both artists and designers) gifted her a camera aged seven, she’s allowed intuition to guide her decisions and outcomes. Put simply, she just knew what she wanted to make and never questioned it. This process proved problematic when she enrolled on the visual communication course at ECAL. She openly describes her four years at the university as a struggle, largely for the way the institution pushed her to ignore that intuition and “explore a wide range of mediums from moving image to diverse technological tools including a reflection on digital research in contemporary photography.” What’s more, “ECAL has a strong visual identity and at first, I felt compelled to correspond to their aesthetic language in order to be accepted. It threw me off balance in relation to my instinctive approach to the medium,” she recalls.

On reflection today, however, Maewenn says that paradoxically, this experience taught her to accept her process. “The school was promoting the concept as quintessential, more than the work itself, the idea outpaced the action,” she says. “I had to go through the deconstruction of my photographic practice which gave me the opportunity to get out of my comfort zone and learn other tools. Nevertheless, in the end, I had to reckon and embrace my intuition as my main guide to realise that is where my main strength lies.”

Exploring a variety of topics circumnavigating the environment, climate change and humankind’s relationship to the natural world, Maewenn has built up a singular body of work. An “exploration of feminine beauty as a celebration of diversity and acceptance,” also plays a major role in her work. Visually, she literally and figuratively zooms in on her subjects to reveal deeper narratives. “The idea of framing is essential for me,” she says. “I give quite a lot of consideration to my post-production as I want to get rid of anything that is not serving my aim. I concentrate and remove things that are not meaningful. Sometimes I return to some pictures in my archives and I find new images appearing in the action of cropping.” In turn, Maewenn pulls focus to several important topics, deciphering our deep connection to nature – what she deems “the original driving force” – through fashion, portraiture and editorial photography with a slick and unmistakable style.

INT: The project seems to utilise a variety of photographic techniques, from the more straightforward to the microscopic. Talk us through your approach and why you decided to make use of so many styles and techniques.

MB: The book is a fragmented stroll, moving between different types and forms of imagery without an immediately obvious narrative intention. Fragmentary evocations of various causes of the collapse relate to human activity and are juxtaposed to a human figure reminiscent of the ghostlike beekeeper.

Talking about a subject like this and capturing it is not an easy task. It’s a complex matter. As my approach is not documentary, I wanted to be able to use a technique that metaphorically suits and reflects my narrative. What the micro-scans reveal is entirely invisible to the human eye, mirroring the blindness of this tragedy.

Many of the pictures resonate with the idea of scale (micro-macro), supported by the use of micro-scanning technology and acting as a scale to question the link between man and insect, dominant and dominated.

The colour is used as a critical element to underline the intrigue. A paradoxical poisonous beauty that attracts and repels at the same time, revealing the fragility of the relationship between man and natural life. We are fascinated by nature, we admire it, but we also do everything to destroy it by our behaviour which is still modelled on our paradigm of the Age of Enlightenment.

INT: What do you hope viewers take from Eternal Ephemerals?

MB: Maybe a mixed feeling of aesthetic and unease, and hopefully an interest to push their awareness a bit further towards what is actually happening worldwide. When you start reading about it, you realise that our biodiversity has been drastically reduced and that our world is in severe danger of collapsing.

INT: If you had to pick a favourite project, which one are you most proud of and why?

MB: I guess the bee project was one of my favourites as it was the one I could spend the most time on. It really opened my eyes and my consciousness to a wider perspective on climate change, the urgency we face, the responsibility of men, the interconnection of all things on earth and the beauty of it all. The incredible complexity and beauty of the bees’ world, their intelligence as a super productive society, the invisible dependence we have on them fascinated me and oriented my thoughts and my philosophy.

INT: In regards to your wider portfolio too, your work is already incredibly distinctive. How did you find your creative voice and visual language?

MB: I think I am a compulsive collector of images, and I have a few favourite themes that created a feeling of estrangement inside me, where beauty can stand alongside ugliness, silence, brutality, grace and roughness. I realise my visual language tends to emerge from a dichotomy that I would like to transform into a dialogue, maybe we could name it “inquiétante beauté”.