TIERRA MÁGICA

TIERRA MÁGICA
Yannick Cormier, Candice Moise

Third book of Light Motiv around carnivals in the world, Tierra Mágica tackles the rituals and masquerades of northwestern Spain.

Every year, the sound of bells comes out of mist that surround villages and try to announce the end of winter, we also hear cries and distant music. As we approach, we begin to distinguish walking trees, fantastic birds and more disturbing figures.

These processions seem to come from very far away, from the depths of time, from under the earth. The work of photographer Yannick Cormier transcribes the amazement that grips us when faced with these frightening and attractive characters.

Tierra Mágica is built on a rhythm of alternating black and white photographs (made with a medium format film) of misty landscapes and sudden appearances.

These masquerades have survived centuries and wars with little change. They can now be seen as the resurgence of an animist world preceding the Christian expansion.

One could almost say that those costumes embody the pagan land, in opposition to the divine sky: all the wild nuances are reinterpreted in the animal, vegetal, or chimerical ornaments.

In the end, this is a parade of sensations that oscillate between dream and nightmare, with Yannick Cormier opening the ball.

The black and white analog photographs go along with a beautiful text written by Candice Moise, a French scholar specialised in the study of masks.

« The masquerade affirms its right to be double: alive and dead at the same time. In the procession, there are masks, frozen faces, faces of death carried on living, jumping and acting bodies, and also animal remains, brought back to life on animated young people... Ambiguity appears in each silhouette, associating refined civility and dirty savagery, raw and delicate, white and black, all together, inseparable. Life and death: lively-death. »

Text excerpt by Candice Moise

To know more, have a look at Yannick Cormier's interview by publisher Eric Le Brun about his works and the book:

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Technical features

• Release date: 4 November 2021
• Photographs : Yannick Cormier
• Text: Candice Moise
• Afterword: Cristina García Rodero
• Spanish translation: Michelle Ortuno
• Graphic design: Lucie Baratte
• Bilingual edition: french, spanish
• Book format: 21 x 25,5 cm / Weight: 0,600kg
• 140 pages  – 61 photographies
• Tirage de 900 exemplaires
• Cover on Wibalin paper – Hot foil for the title
• Phtoographs printed on Symbol Tatami 135 gr
• Text printed with a silver Pantone on Sirio Ultra Black 115gr
• Sewn glued, square spine
• ISBN: 9791095118206
• Public price: 35 €

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Exhibitions and events

• 4 novembre – 23 décembre 2021 : exposition photographique TIERRA MÁGICA organisée par la fondation RUINS en partenariat avec Light Motiv à La Maison Demeure (59100 Roubaix)
• 12 février – 22 mai 2022 : exposition photographique TIERRA MÁGICA au Musée Nicéphore Niépce (Chalon-sur-Saône, 71100) – entrée gratuite pour tous
• 25 février – 7 mai 2023 : exposition photographique TIERRA MÁGICA au Centre d’art et de photographie de Lectoure (32700 Lectoure)

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Press and booksellers' comments

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« With this book, with this photographic work, Yannick Cormier offers us something very beautiful and poignant.

Those traditions which were able to resist wars, dictatorships, those moments when Human sees in Nature a friend, a force whose moods should be respected, are an authentic message. 

The planet lives without us, so what's the point of satisfying our bloated consumer egos?

Let's love her.

Let's respect her.

Et un jour nous aussi nous serons mi-homme mi-lichen, mais aussi des petits dieux des confins. »

Frédéric Martin sur 5ruedu.fr

« L’impression est celle du surgissement d’un monde très ancien, précapitaliste, organisant des cérémonies pour célébrer les forces de la nature et permettre à celles des hommes de déployer pleinement leurs visions les plus fantasmatiques.

They are strange processions of disturbing deities and unassimilable creatures.

Alternant portraits d’hommes masqués, grimés, métamorphosés, et beaux paysages de brume – magnifiques tirages de Romane Angelo -, Tierra Magica est un livre très inattendu, en cela réjouissant, en notre époque si plate, si soumise aux calculs les plus médiocres. »

Fabien Ribery sur L’Intervalle