La Ceinture des Vents

The geographical location of Pays Haut Val d’Alzette, at the border of the Moselle and Meurthe-et-Moselle departments, has led the photographer Cyrielle Lévêque to immerse herself daily in the heart of an environment currently undergoing significant transformation and with a notable industrial past. It is also the living place of distinct social classes.

The photographer's itinerary is free and connected to walking. Winding paths, forests, quarries, mines, old factories, deserted plateaus, and underground cracks constitute the discoveries made in this border territory. The byways of past history and their photographic perspective allow us to consider the Pays Haut Val d’Alzette territory as the sum of the individualities that compose it today and their environment. The project "La ceinture des vents" (The Belt of Winds) is actually conceived as a collective experience. The photographer has given herself an imperative: to create connections with the residents and their images from the past and present. Naturally, this approach opens up time for reflection and memories, but it is primarily an opportunity to question the individual's relationship to the community and the possibility of sharing a common experience. This initially solitary journey now forms the sum of a year spent alongside the population and institutions. A common trajectory emerges and takes shape through testimonials in an uninterrupted thread of words, images, and feelings, thereby appropriating the means to show what matters to the eyes of the men and women encountered: their pride, desires, disillusionments, wounds, and utopias. Between reminiscence and resistance, the sense of a social, emotional, and architectural fracture now gives way to new constructions and elements, like a journey in progress, combining (de)generation and (re)generation.

Photographs by Cyrielle Lévêque, text by Philippe Artières, graphic design by Céline Kriebs.