Born in Ajaccio (South Corsica), photographer Sébastien Arrighi has cultivated a documentary approach that oscillates between reality and fiction. While embarking on projects in both familiar and foreign environments, for the last several years Arrighi has been exploring his native island. Taken while on mythological walks, and at a time when everything seems to be “metamorphosing,” the images capture “a territory with a double isolation” — both insular and mountainous — a place which shares unexpected resemblances to other lands:

“Beyond a topographical and emotional survey, this research questions a complex Mediterranean imaginary and draws attention to the order of the cosmos and its enchantments, from familiar places, visited as if they were old friends lost from sight since childhood. Most of these places are inhabited with the tenderness that we can still detect in certain agricultural landscapes, sacred sites, unknown territories, as opposed to the tourist panoramas too widely documented.”

Testament to Arrighi’s connection to the natural world, the series pays tribute to the silent powers that dictate the geological realm while showing how inseparable it is from that of the human, as seen in the familial portraits punctuated throughout. See more images from “Ora” below.