Volta Celeste, 2022

Sébastien Wasseler  

Sébastien Wasseler is a French photographer born in Besançon in 1980, specializing in architectural photography. Since the 2010s, ruins have become his main subject of study; he currently resides in Strasbourg.

His work on industrial landscapes was notably recognized in the 2022 edition of the Archifoto competition organized by the European House of Architecture Upper Rhine and the Strasbourg Chamber.

ARTISTIC CAREER PATH AND APPROACH

A self-taught training

Growing up between Burgundy and Franche-Comté, two regions hit by deindustrialization, abandoned places became familiar landscapes and childhood playgrounds for the photographer. The forbidden and mysterious surrounding these buildings compelled him to cross their thresholds from a very young age.

In the late 1990s, Sébastien Wasseler trained in film photography while beginning university studies in history and geography. Influenced by humanist photography, street and landscape photography were his initial sources of inspiration. In the 2010s, his growing interest in architecture led him to explore marginalized places, those that, having lost their original function, are no longer noticed by society, or are even neglected and forgotten. Equipped with his digital SLR camera, he began to explore the abandoned sites in his immediate surroundings. A visit to the monumental Rhodiaceta textile factory in Besançon marked the starting point of his photographic journey dedicated to ruins.

The remains

Places once inhabited and then abandoned by humankind are rich in interest. Material products of an era and a civilization, they bear witness to past human genius and vanished glory. Their disuse and absence of human occupation do not, however, make them gloomy, frozen, and inanimate spaces. Subject to the passage of time, they are, on the contrary, living organisms in perpetual motion. Peeling paint, moldy wallpaper, a wall riddled with cracks, a collapsing roof, or a facade overgrown with vegetation are all traces of human presence as well as symptoms of a rupture that means what once was is no more. The discovery of this state of decay leaves no viewer indifferent. It spontaneously evokes a wide range of emotions and places the viewer in the position of witness to a bygone past that raises questions and carries meaning. Thus, these vestiges act as a mirror to the fragility of our existence and the ephemeral nature of our societies and utopias; a kind of modern, architectural vanitas. The energy, technological, economic, social, and cultural transformations of our societies are all underlying themes. The vestiges, in this way, question both the link our societies forge with the past and the relationship they maintain with the future.

Sébastien Wasseller's images seek to capture the human imprint and the passage of time on buildings before their restoration or their slow, outright disappearance. His predilection for wide shots highlights the scale of the architecture while simultaneously unsettling the viewer, who is drawn into the perspectives, whereas tighter shots focus on architectural details. The notion of abandonment is sometimes subtle, revealed by a minute clue, and sometimes more obvious. The series is thus punctuated by the monumentality of the buildings and by the details of their slow decay, which disorient and challenge the viewer.

The series

Over the course of about fifteen years, Sébastien Wasseler has visited and photographed several hundred buildings in Europe and the United States, which currently form several series:

The Primavera series presents abandoned villas that once belonged to wealthy Italian families. Wide shots highlight their monumental and ornate architecture, while tighter close-ups emphasize the inventiveness and profusion of their decoration, including bas-reliefs, murals, moldings, and sculptures. Instead of a nostalgic look at a bygone era and its splendor, this series offers a positive vision that transcends the initially morbid feeling inspired by these vestiges destined for slow disappearance. For a whole host of organic life, constantly evolving, thrives within them, thanks to the passage of time and the seasons, and the effects of light, sun, and weather. Is not spring the season of rebirth, and after the long winter slumber, does not nature restart its perpetual cycle of life?

- In the Metropolis series, Sébastien Wasseller extracts commonplaces from their original function to create a sense of disorientation in the viewer and plunge them into the confines of a dreamlike, futuristic world. By blurring the lines between reality and the supernatural, present and future, the artist questions our relationship to space and time. In an era where technological innovations allow yesterday's science fiction to permeate our daily lives, what points of reference can we cling to in a world that moves at breakneck speed and where it seems so easy to lose our footing?