Based in the south of France, French photographer Arnaud Teicher (previously featured here) is drawn to traces left behind in the earth, be they drawn by time, shaped by climate, or left behind by man. His most recent series is a portrait of a landscape very familiar to him. “La montagne neuve” (The new mountain) is the former name of a province located in the French department of Alpes-de-Haute-Provence (gateway to the Alps), where Teicher has spent a lot of time:

“I have so often surveyed its summits, skirted its torrents and crossed its forests, that these elements seem to have a language. This deeply rural and sometimes hostile territory is home to small, geographically deprived communities whose landscape blends reality and imagination. Cradled by the rhythm of the seasons that pass one after the other, man, in this eternal cycle, must find his place and integrate with nature in order not to be rejected. A growing population, aware of the announced agony of a landlocked, isolated and desertified rural society, is becoming aware of the need to invent new ways of living in the territory. It’s a world that I photograph for its appearances and aspirations, before they can escape me.”

See more from “La montagne neuve” below!