The pierced rock

The story behind the photo

A limestone arch known as La Roche Percée rises above the Dordogne at Montfort, a small hamlet of Vitrac, catching the first light of sunrise while a lone tree clings to the cliff edge beside it. An opening is worn straight through the rock, and the sky behind it, turning gold and pink, fills the gap. Below, the river carries that same light in a faint magenta shimmer as the night’s mist begins to lift off the water.

I climbed up before dawn to be in position while the valley was still mostly asleep, and framed from below so that the arch sits against open sky rather than against the far bank. I deliberately kept the vegetation growing out of its top and sides: it tells you the formation is old and left to itself, and a cleaner outline would have looked like a monument rather than a piece of eroded ground.

That calm, half-lit hour is as much the subject of this photograph as the rock itself: a quiet negotiation between stone, water and first light.