Olivier Martel
France
“The great adventure of existence is to find where one feels at home.” This quote by Sylvain Tesson sums up my quest: seeking a place of harmony where humans reconnect with nature while rediscovering inner balance. A lawyer turned landscape photographer, I draw inspiration from vast silent spaces. My work, influenced by mono no aware—the Japanese notion of sensitivity to impermanence—invites viewers to see nature not as possession, but as a fragile, contemplative presence.
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L'adieu aux glaciers
The millennial glaciers of the Pyrenees are no longer eternal; within 15 years they will have vanished. Their gradual disappearance reminds us of our own finitude. At once majestic, ephemeral, and fragile, glaciers carry within them the memory of time and the urgent challenges of tomorrow’s climate.
This series is part of 2025, the International Year of Glacier Preservation (UNESCO), and reflects my dual role as artist and glaciographer. Each photograph of a glacier and its surroundings becomes a witness, a fragment of what once was—and perhaps what will never be again.
To photograph glaciers today is to inscribe oneself in a double tradition: the romantic gaze, inherited from visionary painters who saw Nature as a mirror of the soul, and the urgent ecological call in a world on the brink. The ecological romanticism I claim seeks to reconcile these two dimensions, inviting us to inhabit the world with both tenderness and responsibility.
