Father Photographs Children’s Magical World Through Water Reflections
In 2004, a french sculptor Alan Laboile, picked up a small digital camera to photograph the art he created. What he didn’t realize then was how that digital camera would become much more than just a tool to photograph his sculptures, but would in fact help him create a visual diary of his 6 children’s youth. His recent collection titled Reflexion Autour du Bassin (Reflection Around The Basin) caught my attention as a wonderful documentation of the youthful free spirits of his children caught through the reflection in the water.
While looking over the photos I was reminded of the book, Where The Wild Things Are. I can imagine that like the character Max in the book, his children really enjoyed creating fantasy worlds along the edge of the water basin. Laboile commented that from his youth he has one single picture and so being able to document his children growing up through photographs has been a personal passion of his. This series of photos shot through the water reflection especially caught my eye because of the way they look almost like illustrations or even a series of dreams.
Mr. Laboile was born in Gironde, in the southwest of France, in 1968. He never left. He likes to think of the stream that borders his family’s property as a boundary between the realm that is theirs and the world everyone else inhabits. “The stream on the edge of the world,” he said.
What really touched me the most looking through Laboile’s work was how it reminded me of my own youth. Growing up in the mountains my friends and I would spend hours on end constructing tree forts or creating fantasy worlds among the trees, streams and tall weeds. Yet now as I glance over at my two boys sitting on the couch they are hunkered over the iPad mesmerized by the collection of videos they can spend endless hours watching on Netflix. It was a wake up call to me that it just might be time to put the electronic devices on a high shelf and go build a blanket fort in the living room.
[Via My Modern Met]
