The winds rush, fly, swoop down, dwindle away, commence again; hover above, whistle, roar, and smile; they are frenzied, wanton, unbridled, or sinking at ease upon the raging waves.
Their howlings have a harmony of their own. They make all the heavens sonorous.
They blow in the cloud as in a trumpet; they sing through the infinite space with the mingled tones of clarions, horns, bugles, and trumpets – a sort of Promethean fanfare.
Such was the music of ancient Pan. […] They huddle the clouds together, and drive them diverse.
They mould and knead the supple waters as with a million hands.
Victor Hugo. Toilers of the Sea.
« SEA BREAD » is a literal translation from an old expression in « breton ».
It talk about a story of fishermen and farmers who where very poor.
During the past time XIX -early XX century, they worked very hard.
To make more some money, they went (often women and child), after tempest, pick a sea weed on the beach and it was for them a possibility to buy a little more food for family. Since a XVII century there is a special law for a people who live in this part of Brittany. If you found something on a strand, it’s for you and you don’t have to pay tax for that or give it back.
In this region you have a story about plunderer of wrecks that was deliberately run aground ships on the coast to take the property but it’s another story… they are many stories about stranding and drift there…
My « sea bread » series want to recall this old “practice” in Brittany which consist in everything that you can find, you can use or transform, etc…
During several winter I have been in a small village called Porspoder ; it’ a kind of end of world. I often like to give attention on objet which the people usually doesn’t like, touch or see. I pick the roots of a very large sea weed which was tear off by a tempest and roll in a deep ocean, during day and day. It arrived on a beach partially deformed and destroy.
The interesting thing for me is also the question of point of view on this strange form.
Sometime it appears like anthropological faces or monstrous. I don’t want to play too much with this effect, but there is something manifest, like portrait from immemorial time.