Entry Title: " Nouakchott opus incertum"
Name: Philippe BERNARD, France
Category: Professional, Buildings


Entry Description: Looking for “vestiges of future”, I went to Nouakchott, Mauritania, because it’s an young and ambiguous African city, full of light, in the middle of two deserts: mineral and aquatic. To photograph this city, I imposed two major constraints: pervasive light and an uninhabited landscape. I therefore chose to work in the middle of the day, especially on Fridays, at prayer time.

I feel fascinated by brightness and whiteness; the whiteness that emerges. In photography, the white means full of light, saturation, overdose. I am attracted to that colour, a vain testimony of both a dazzling and a vanquishing sight. A photo-grapher in its original meaning, I play with this light and thus builds pictures that are often ambiguous, borderline between appearing and disappearing. I use the light as a watermark to expose the world.