Téo Becher
About Téo Becher
Born in Nancy in 1991, Téo Becher is a French photographer who graduated
from the Septante-Cinq School of Visual Arts in Brussels (2014) and holds a
master's degree in photography from KASKA in Antwerp (2020). Teo Becher
interrogates the link between nature and culture throughout his photography
projects.
The photographic approach of Téo Becher
In his photographic work, Téo Becher is interested in the relationship between
nature and culture. He uses photography to capture the narrative potential of
territories, revealing both the enchanting atmospheres and their unwavering
link with human occupation. After the “Charbon blanc” project, through which
he focused on the presence of the aluminum industry in the Maurienne valley
in Savoie, the photographer left the field of documentary to adopt a more
formal approach to landscape.
The Forest of Soignes is at the center of his new series entitled Hercynienne
where he calls for a dialogue between the still wild part of the forest, knowing
that it was part of one of the primary forests of Western Europe (the forest
Hercynian), and the controlled presence of human beings in this nature on the
outskirts of Brussels. In the forest, Téo detects the elements of a formal
language which reflect this ambivalence. Using color filters and handmade
mattes, which he uses in the den of the darkroom, he redirects our gaze
towards details usually lost in the blur of the landscape. The photographer has
maintained a very artisanal relationship with photography, and now only works
on film, covering a physical relationship with a medium that is now
dematerialized. Without restraint, the artist appropriates nature through color
and form. And asks: to what extent is our perception of nature conditioned by
visual habits linked to our education and the codes of a Western culture
disconnected from it?
Exhibitions in Belgium and across Europe
His work was exhibited at the La Gacilly festival in 2017, at the Charleroi
Museum of Photography in 2018, at the Manifesto festival in 2019, at FoMu in
Antwerp in 2020, and screened at Riga Photo Month, Latvia, in 2020. Charbon
blanc won the Caisse d'Épargne prize at the L'image Satellite festival in Nice
in 2019, as well as the Maison Blanche prize at the PhotoMarseille 2020
festival. His images entered the collections of the Charleroi photography
museum as well as the FoMu in Antwerp.
Art books by Téo Becher
Téo Becher has released two art books so far. His first book, “Charbon Blanc”,
was issued in 2021 by “Le Bec en l’Air” editions. In this book he combines two
complementary image regimes. Faithful to a conception of photography
inseparable from a wandering within a defined space, he begins by physically
experiencing the Maurienne landscape: being in the mountain, walking there,
breathing there, as close as possible to the topography, to the point where this
« uninhabitable » mountain becomes a central character in his book.
In parallel, influenced by the thought of Philippe Descola, for whom nature is a
cultural construction and therefore the difference between nature and culture a
nonsense (Par-delà nature et culture, 2005), and by Donna J. Haraway’s
reflections on the Anthropocene (Staying with the Trouble, 2016, published in
French by Mondes à faire, 2020), Teo Becher sought to photograph this
moment when landscape and traces of human activity meet, in a relationship
of interdependence rather than of opposition.
His second book “Emmêlement et autres Histoires de Forêts” issued in 2023
was made in collaboration with Marion Ellena and Almudena Romero. The
series Tangle and other forest stories questions the notions of nature and
culture, questioning the limits, edges and interactions between these two
concepts built on antagonisms that can be considered relatively false or
mystifying. Accompanied by researchers from the Environmental Geography
laboratory (GEODE – CNRS/Université Toulouse Jean Jaurès) in Toulouse,
Téo Becher walked in natural spaces – mountains and forests – in search of
traces left by humans in the landscape.
Exhibitions at Hangar : Regarde mon histoire/ Kijk naar mijn verhaal (2021)