Camille Robiou du Pont

ISLANDNESS

“Insularity is isolation. Islandness is rupture; a broken link with the rest of the world and therefore a space out of space, a place out of time, a bare place, an absolute place. There are degrees in “islandness”, but an island is all the more island as the rupture is strong or felt as such. This is what makes you dream.” Through the presence of water in her stills, Camille hopes to impart the same soothing feelings of security and protection she feels around the ocean. “I find this aspect on the island and underwater, prompting us to reconnect with our roots and ourselves through nature and the ocean. Here we are allowing nature to occupy it’s place; not trying to twist it, but merge into it, bathe there.” There is therefore a double dimension in Camille’s work: a dreamlike part, where the bodies seem to aspire to desires for evanescence, lightness, bodies melted in the matter of the ocean, and, in hollow, a testimony of a lost beauty, of an impossible return to nature, in these spaces ravaged by climatic disorder and the thirst for tourism. Camille then testifies, implicitly to this ecological emergency, the urgency to appropriate the world and to know the paradise an island can and must be. « It’s about wild nature, and how through this nature, I find the dreamlike, imaginary journey that I want to offer people.” Underwater photography fascinates Camille Robiou Du Pont, and allows her to play between the dualities of real and imaginary.She likens it to being cut off from the world, where she can create otherworldly, dreamlike images.The artist believes the essence of the divine feminine lies in deep connection with Mother Nature — “I wanted to reconnect with the roots of nature and the ocean, by featuring the female body in nature, showcasing how it can awaken our senses: smell, sight, and touch. I see no separation between the woman I am photographing and her surroundings–they are one, as the woman lives inside nature.” This series is an invitation for women to take a deep dive into the most vibrant, emotive, sense of themselves, between light and shadow, to reconnect with their feminine, unapologetically fierce, ever-changing, natures. Through a flowstate of authenticity, other dimensions are unlocked, and it is through embracing this abyss of continual change, evolution and self acceptance that we find luminous freedom.

Photographer

Camille Robiou Du Pont is a French artist and photographer who has been grateful to call Siargao Island (Philippines) her home for six years and counting.

Not a day goes by that she isn’t inspired by nature and the ocean; as if she resides in a constant daydream, her photographs reflect the notion of poetic dimension. Camille has always been fascinated with women and their relationship to the ocean–the way water sheds light on their beauty, confidence and freedom, a space with no separation between nature and the female form, where their bodies become a continuity of the surrounding universe.

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