Nicolas Floc’h, Invisible / Parallèle

Located halfway between the village and the Villa Carmignac, the Sainte-Agathe fort, which was built in the 16th century under François I, occupies a strategic position. Overlooking the island and harbour of Hyères, it played a defensive role for centuries before being assigned to the Port-Cros National Park in 1991. A permanent exhibition on the natural heritage and the history of Porquerolles is currently on display.

The great round tower, which was renovated by the Port-Cros National Park in partnership with the Carmignac Foundation, harbours a vaulted dome-shaped room with an oculus, crowned with a terrace which offers a 360-degree view of the island’s land- and seascapes.

As an extension of The Imaginary Sea at Villa Carmignac, Nicolas Floc’h has taken over this space, following diving explorations of the seabeds around the Porquerolles, Port-Cross and Levant Islands, as he had previously done in the Calanques National Park* from Cassis and Marseille, and in Brittany.

Revealing new landscapes built up from perspectives on the living world, the exhibition Invisible is part of Nicolas Floc’h’s photographic series entitled “Paysages productifs”.

Since 2018, following the entire coastline of the Calanques National Park, 162kms, Nicolas Floc’h captures the state of the underwater landscapes at a given moment. The images, taken in black and white, between 0 and -30 metres, in natural light with a wide angle, allow for a panoramic approach to the landscapes and their transformations.

The Calanques National Park is the only peri-urban park in Europe. It can therefore be a “laboratory” area prefiguring the possible future state of the Mediterranean (a peri-urban sea which is indicative of more global phenomena), the warming and acidification of its waters are higher than in other areas in the world.

Nicolas Floc’h
Paysages productifs, Invisible Parallèle, Porquerolles, Plage d'Argent, -5m, 2020
© ADAGP, Paris, 2021