Fotograf Magazine

Philippe Durand: Chauvet, l’aventure intérieure, Paris: RVB Books, 2021, ISBN 9791090306974

Caves. What more is there to say? Caves are the most – the most ancient, the most enticing, the most repulsive, the most associative, the coldest, the most constant, the dimmest, open and closed, for everything and for nothing, and often kind of empty. But the cave that is the “most” of them all is Chauvet. In addition to the fact that it contains art made by our ancestors thirty-five thousand years ago, which is in itself hard to believe, Chauvet is also fascinating in how inaccessible it is. Off limits to the public. And that is what we love about it, projecting our own myths about the cave onto it. This original book of photographs by Philippe Durand achieves something incredible in not ruining, disrupting, describing, explaining, illustrating or specifying these myths. That’s quite rare in photography, isn’t it? I consider both the myth of the cave and this book a precious gem. And the brilliant printing? The depth and scale of colors in a surface that invites one to dive in like breaking a surface of water? The people at RVB Books are simply incredible.

Markéta Kinterová