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THORONET ABBEY, FRANCE (1/12)
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Photograph of a window in the Abbey of Le Thoronet by Ferrante Ferranti. The artist explores the remnants of the past through the play of light and shadow created by the sun on the ruins. With the soul of an archaeologist, this trained architect combines his photographic work with his passion for antiquity and the Baroque.
Thoronet Abbey is a Cistercian abbey located in Provence, it is one of the “three Provençal sisters”, the other two being Sénanque (Vaucluse) and Silvacane (Bouches-du-Rhône). As part of the inscription on the World Heritage List managed by UNESCO, the notice on the Abbey of Fontenay indicates that “the most perfect” example of Cistercian architecture is the Abbey of Thoronet.
Length : 0.39 in / 1 cm
Height : 29.53 in / 75 cm
Width : 43.31 in / 110 cm
Weigth : 2.2 lb / 1 kg
Artist : Ferrante Ferranti
Technique: Digital photography
Support: Pigment print on baryta paper (Canson Fine Art Baritta), laminated on Dibond
Dimensions: 110 x 75 cm
Number of copies: 12 signed and numbered prints
Year: 2012
Inspiration: Built in the twelfth century by Cistercian monks, the Abbey of Le Thoronet stands apart from the world, in a voluntary austerity where every stone seems to be silenced. Le Thoronet, this radical architecture makes stripping down a form of spirituality.
In this photograph, Ferrante Ferranti does not try to describe the monument: he captures its inner breathing. The light glides over the walls, reveals the roughness of the limestone, and hugs the volumes. The gaze circulates in space as in a silent prayer. The abbey then becomes an acoustic instrument of the sacred, a place where emptiness takes shape.
Through his contemplative approach, Ferranti restores the very essence of the site: an architecture designed for meditation, where time seems to stand still. More than a building, the abbey appears as a presence, a sensitive experience, inviting us to slow down, to listen, to fully inhabit the silence. (Abbey classified as a historical monument, today known as Abbaye du Thoronet.)
Ferrante Ferranti
FRANCE
Born January 13, 1960 in Algeria, of a Sardinian mother and a Sicilian father. He took his first photograph at the age of eighteen, a wave in Belle-Île-en-Mer. Passionate about Fernand Pouillon’s book, Les Pierres Sauvages, he began training as an architect in Toulouse, which he completed at Paris-UP6 in 1985 with a diploma in Theaters and scenography in the Baroque era. Traveling photographer, he has been involved for thirty years with Dominique Fernandez in a joint exploration of the Baroque and the different layers of civilizations, from Syria to Bolivia via Sicily and Saint Petersburg. His photographs dialogue with the texts of the writer, who defines him in the album Itinerrances (Actes Sud, 2013) as “the inventor of a language which links the sun to the ruins, in search of the meaning hidden in the forms” .
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