Perched chapel
- 📍 Location: Eglise Saint-Martin, La Genevraye, France
- 📅 Date: 2024
The church of Saint-Martin at La Genevraye, standing with its few trees on a low rise above a field that has already turned to straw, under a sky of heavy flat cloud. Three bands and nothing else: ochre below, a dark green crest in the middle, white-grey above.
The whole composition rests on where the horizon sits. I placed the crest of the field low, at roughly a third, so the sky would have the weight and the building would be pushed up against it rather than surrounded by it. From a higher viewpoint the church would have sat comfortably in a landscape; from down here it looks stranded, which is the word the title is reaching for.
The light is completely diffused, with no shadow anywhere. That is usually a problem and here it is the point: an even sky turns the field into a single flat colour, removes every distraction from the middle ground, and lets a small grey building hold a very large frame.
There is nothing famous about this church. It is one of thousands of village churches in the Ile-de-France, built and rebuilt over centuries, and it has outlasted every farmhouse that once stood around it.
I wanted a photograph about persistence rather than about beauty, and a composition austere enough to match the subject.
Limited-edition fine-art print from the Skywaven Studios collection, available in several sizes, papers and framing options.
