Fontainebleau Forest, France
For a number of years, I’ve photographed the Fontainebleau Forest, a 50,000-acre woodland 60 kilometers south of Paris, France, the place where the Barbizon artists of the 19th Century – Corot, Rousseau, Le Gray, Cuvelier – had created their well-known work. On the first trip, my approach was to expose its natural landscape and to capture similar scenes with tall oak trees, large sandstone boulders, and luscious clearings. But while there, and during each subsequent visit, I was confronted with a paradox: the forest emerged not only wild and impressive but also controlled and depleted.
Since the 19th Century, Fontainebleau Forest has been a widely consumed and trampled area. Due to train transportation in the 1840s and Claude-Francois Denecourt, who developed a forest travel guide, its thousands of walking paths and numerous monuments, the forest became a grand social destination and huge tourist attraction. People traversed its paths, rode through on bikes and horses, and enjoyed its natural surroundings. In fact, over eleven million people still do each year.
Today, Fontainebleau Forest is a national forest, protected from deforestation and biodiversity loss and recognized as a UNESCO site. Nevertheless, 40,000 cubic meters of trees are still cut down per year without equal reforestation, and multiple recreational activities take place within, including rock climbing with over 200 courses, which erode the forest grounds and the surfaces of the boulders. These two actions alone are huge detriments to the fight against environmental decay and climate change.
While three-quarters of the Earth’s landscape, according to the United Nations, has been controlled or altered by human activity, not all activity may be negative. The Office of National Forests reported fifteen new tree species have been planted to improve Fontainebleau Forest. Is this positive? Through this ongoing study of Fontainebleau Forest, I strive to expose its existing landscape and to reveal the positive and negative effects of human impact upon it. Perhaps the more we see, the more we can question and understand.