22 - Rebekka Deubner - La Terre Amoureuse (Said Of Soil That Sticks To The Boots)

Jul 6, 2026 – Oct 4, 2026

In March 2023, Rebekka Deubner travelled to Sainte-Soline in the Deux-Sèvres region, to take part in the demonstrations against mega-basins. Repression was immediate and violent and the event was quickly reduced to spectacular images and simplifying narratives. Yet what was erased seemed essential to her. It is towards this space, outside the frame, that she chose to return, almost every month, between April 2023 and December 2025. Travelling from north to south across the area throughout the seasons, she shares the daily lives of those who live and work on these lands. Amandine, Martial, Valentin, Rémi, Benoit and Jean-Jacques—farmers, market gardeners and environmental activists—introduce her to their practices, which follow the rhythm of ordinary, repeated gestures: fencing, irrigating, weeding, sowing, harvesting, observing and feeding. These are all actions that anchor the body in time and shift the gaze away from picturesque clichés. Gradually, another geography emerges, consisting of cultivated plots, greenhouses, hedges and ponds, stretching from the outskirts of the Saint-Soline reservoir to the dry banks of the Mignon. Water, at once present and absent, forms the common thread running through this ensemble, conceived as a long, continuous movement. It flows, runs out, stagnates, then vanishes. A vital resource and a political issue, water weaves through the images without ever settling, as if resisting any attempt at simplification. As close as possible to the earth and the transformations that shape it, Rebekka Deubner embeds the image within a shared experience. It does not precede the relationship: it arises from it. Rather than explaining or convincing, this work focuses on what resists demonstration: long temporalities, repetitions, the forms of attention that make commitment possible. The image is no longer the centre, but one of the effects. The project La terre amoureuse was awarded the 2025 research and creation grant of the Institut pour la photographie des Hauts-de-France, Lille. Julie Héraut