Woodland Swells

Basque Country — July 2025

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Woodland Swells — 1st Session was made during a single summer afternoon in July, between Sare and Zugarramurdi, in the Basque Country. Like a surf session, the series belongs to one continuous moment: one light, one wind, one rhythm, one moving body, and one heightened attention to what appears.

I grew up in Douarnenez, on the western edge of Brittany, with the coastline as part of everyday life. Influenced by my cousins from the Basque coast, I began bodyboarding and later surfing as a teenager — a practice I have never abandoned. When I later left Brittany to study inland, a professor once told me that, on windy days, walking through the woods could sometimes feel like being close to the ocean.

Years later, between Sare and Zugarramurdi, that sentence resurfaced. Through movement, blur, vegetal textures, and fragments of recognizable forest, Woodland Swells looks for the swell away from the sea.