Between the Shadows
Annette Boutellier
The primeval forest unfolds as a living organism — a complex entity whose apparent chaos reveals a subtle structure sustained by invisible balances. Within this ancient ecosystem, plants, animals, and microorganisms coexist in a network of interdependencies, where every change triggers a response and every disturbance leads to a reconfiguration. This capacity for adaptation is not merely an ecological process, but the expression of an existential dynamic: a constant tension between disappearance and regeneration, collapse and renewal. The images render the silent density of these spaces visible, revealing both their archaic power and their inherent fragility.
In the face of the climate crisis and the irreversible destruction of original ecosystems, these landscapes emerge as territories of resistance, while also functioning as sensitive archives of a threatened world. Between light and darkness, growth and decay, a perceptual field opens in which the survival strategies of a nature guided by a slow, evolutionary, and non-anthropocentric intelligence become visible. The forest thus becomes a mirror of our own existence — a place that recalls the deep entanglement between human destiny and natural habitats. It invites reflection on vulnerability as strength, on resilience as process, and on the necessity of an attentive, respectful, and caring gaze. The photographic work links the outer landscape to an inner, mental, and sensory dimension. Between the shadows, liminal spaces emerge in which the image makes visible what escapes language: the diffuse, the fragile, the unsayable.
Between the Shadows invites a passage through this in-between : a poetic and political territory situated between chaos and order, disappearance and persistence, the tangible world and the inner landscape — where photography becomes a space of contemplation, memory, and awareness.
Year of production: 2025
With the support of: Stadt Bern
Watch the video interview with Annette Boutellier on our YouTube channel.
