Grand Parc is a series of 62 landscape photographs taken between 2008 and 2012 in a parkland leisure resort close to Lyons. The images reveal a conventional landscape inscribed in a setting designed andadapted to echo the growing urbanization of a major city. They also reflect a paradox : the co-existence of indifference when facing standardized landscapes, and the sentiment of being moved, still, andnevertheless, by the visible world... Is it possible, today, for landscapes charged with economie and ecological imperatives to nourish and inspire beholder's experience even though long shaped by painting and modernity? This PhD thesis in visual arts focuses on the Picturesque as a means of addressing thesequestions. First from a historical perspective - the Picturesque as depreciated aesthetics - and subsequently as a theoretical tool capable of sustaining active visual investigation. ln the face of hackneyed cultural codes, the Picturesque is reinvested with critical perspective and summoned to cast a lucid but nonetheless sensitive eye on social reality.
Landscape and photography : the question of the Picturesque