Submission The tree of life

April 2020, innercity Paris, lockdown in full swing. Outside, the parks are closed, and like many, I cannot admire the emerging spring. I miss nature terribly. I then ask my best friend, Isabelle, yes like me, to take pictures from the outside. Our confinements hardly resemble each other. She lives in the Belgian Ardennes countryside and walks her dog every day in the woods. A daily photographic dialogue then takes place between us. Every day, I ask her: Could you send me pictures of this, pictures of that? She finds me trees, shadows, dead leaves, forests, blades of grass ... She tries to guess what could inspire me the most. I mix my own pictures with hers. I make them pass on “the other side of the mirror” in a dreamlike world between fantasy and reality, concrete and nature, freedom and captivity. It is an introspective work. I use my camera as a way to distort, reshape, the world so that it looks as close as possible to what I feel. In this way, I reappropriate the situation and I offer myself a few breaths of fresh air and freedom without moving from home. This photograph is a self-portrait. This is part of a series that I made an animated gif with called The Serpent's Dance. This is my reinterpretation of Gustave Klimt's Tree of Life. With this series, I escaped far away in an imaginary journey.