Gordes view point
- 📍 Location: Gordes, Luberon, Provence, France
- 📅 Date: 2022
The village is built in tiers up a rock spur, every house in the same pale limestone, so that from the road below it reads as a single mass rather than as separate buildings. I used a long lens to compress those tiers further and let the church at the top close the pyramid.
I framed tight, cutting out the valley floor and most of the sky. The classic view of Gordes includes a great deal of empty foreground; removing it turns the village into a texture — hundreds of small rectangles of stone stacked into one shape — which is what I actually find remarkable about it.
The light arrived from the side just before sunset, which is the only hour this stone is interesting. Head on it goes flat and chalky; raking across, every wall and every roof gets an edge, and the whole hillside acquires relief.
Provence is heavily photographed and Gordes more than most of it. I was not trying to find an unknown angle, only to make an honest one: a hill that people have been piling stone onto for eight hundred years, photographed at the moment the stone gives something back.
Limited-edition fine-art print from the Skywaven Studios collection, available in several sizes, papers and framing options.
