Echoes From Dust And Fracturation

As part of the "Transition, Social Landscape" Franco-South African project, Alain Willaume was invited to consider the implications of an impending programme of fracking by the Shell Company in the semi-arid Karoo area of South Africa. In response to an uncertain future he has conjured an evanescent metaphor for a haunted territory and for the suspicions and fears of the inhabitants he met randomly on the dirt roads. The pictures – whose rich mid-tones are, consciously, neither black or white – suggest the environmental threat of this burning issue, but in doing so they also preserve the infinite grace of this landscape, the fate of which is now held in abeyance.