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Label: Bernard Léchot's photo essay
Dark Canary
Visual arts

Dark Canary

written by Bernard Léchot

Soon to be historic images... Sixty years after its closure in 1965, the asbestos factory in Canari, Corsica, will be destroyed and its quarries «made safe» from this year onwards. After a vein was discovered in 1898, a Swiss working for the ETERNIT company spotted a real deposit in the 1920s. By 1940, millions of tons of rock had been extracted from the site by ETERNIT subsidiary SMA (Société minière de l'amiante), disfiguring the region. Once the asbestos had been isolated, the crushed rock filled the bays and coves of western Cap Corse, transforming them into black beaches, such as the famous Nonza beach.

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When the sky speaks
Photography

When the sky speaks

By Bernard Léchot · May 29, 2025
Mind you, we're just talking about nitrogen and oxygen, water vapour, sun and clouds, not Heaven with a capital C that hypothetical gods would use as a megaphone. No, simply the sky in all its vastness, movement and light. Three snapshots taken on planet Earth, in Italy and Switzerland, rendered here without the slightest AI aimed at creating a reality other than our own.
1055 Via Tuscolana
Photography

1055 Via Tuscolana

By Bernard Léchot · 15 March 2025
A dreamy stroll through a place that was born in the dark years, then became a symbol of the seventh art, and is now undergoing a tremendous renaissance, allowing visitors to span the millennia as they explore the sets!
Street views
Photography

Street views

By Bernard Léchot · 09 February 2025
Walls have ears and sometimes eyes too. Reflective eyes, as in this parking lot in Rome. Eyes open to passers-by at espresso time, again in Rome. Or melancholy eyes, like those of a lonely clown in Montmartre.
Smoking water
Photography

Smoking water

By Bernard Léchot · 10 January 2025
In Jacques Brel's «Plat pays», the sky was so low that the canal was lost, so gray that it hung. And it was the plain that smoked in July. Here, on the banks of the Broye canal, between lakes Neuchâtel and Murten, under a pale blue winter sky, it's the canal that smokes in the icy beauty of the moment.
Caribbean art
Photography

Caribbean art

By Bernard Léchot · 20 October 2024
Quelque part en Guadeloupe. Soleil antillais et air du large. Au fil des ans, l’humidité, le sel, les embruns se sont attaqués à la tôle, l’ont rouillée, mangée, déchirée, sculptée. La modeste case créole – abandonnée, ou pas – est devenue œuvre d’art.
Blue white pink
Photography

Blue white pink

By Bernard Léchot · September 13, 2024
Starting in late spring in Aigues-Mortes, the saturated brine in the salt pans takes on a pink hue that deepens with each passing day, creating a stunning contrast with the blue of the sky and the white of the salt. These colors were captured in June.
Yes, it leans. What about it?
Photography

Yes, it leans. What about it?

By Bernard Léchot · August 20, 2024
The Leaning Tower of Pisa, which celebrated its 850th anniversary in 2023, has been leaning more and more since it was built, right up until the 1990s, when—threatening to collapse—it was securely stabilized. But luckily for Instagrammers, it’s still leaning...