Marie Hervé & Elsa Martinez | Sand of noises

*Sand of Noises* is a collaborative project that emerged from our meeting at the École nationale supérieure de la photographie in Arles. The first chapter focused on the city of Palermo in 2020, and this led to a second journey in September 2021, tracing a route across a wider part of Sicily. Set against the backdrop of Palermo and the landscapes of Sicily, steeped in legends and hybrid cultural heritages, our work explores the notions of ruins, reconstruction and collective memory.

Treating the island – a land surrounded by the mythical waters of the Mediterranean – as a phantasmagorical figure, the project charts a route that embraces the visual language of archaeology, characterised by chance encounters and wanderings, and moving between grand history, anecdotes and storytelling.

As a site of endless projections, the ruins and objects found by chance along our journey bear witness to a sense of melancholy: that of the impossibility of grasping what has been lost, and of having nothing left but fragments, remnants and silent witnesses. As a creator of mirages, photography moves beyond its role as evidence to become an ambiguous tool, blurring the lines between science and fiction, truth and falsehood, the past and a future yet to be built.

This project was developed as part of the Eurazeo Grant for emerging photographic artists and exhibited at the Hôtel de l’Industrie in Paris from 7 to 15 April 2022.