©Paul Rousteau 2021 courtesy Loose Joints.

Written by Angelica Cantù Rajnoldi

Edited by Ben Blavat

When was the last time you watched the sun set? In these moments, we lose the perception of space and time we live in, extending our minds and hearts in a moment that seems eternal.

Looking at the horizon always arouses strong emotions that instill a silent appreciation. Paul Rousteau evokes these feelings in Seascapes, his new book. With his “mental typographies,” Rousteau conquers our imagination, making us relive that tension toward the infinite, that desire to overcome the barriers of reality and stretch beyond the present moment. In doing so, his point of view and sensitivity seem to draw inspiration from the Romantic movement, while his aesthetic approach is more Impressionist.

The project was realized while Rosteau worked on a boat off the Coral Sea in Australia, and its exploration of the colors of horizons echoes the sentiments of poet Rebecca Solnit in A Field Guide to Getting Lost.

“For many years, I have been moved by the blue at the far edge of what can be seen, that color of horizons, of remote mountain ranges, of anything far away. The color of that distance is the color of an emotion, the color of solitude and of desire, the color of there seen from here, the color of where you are not,” Solnit writes. “And the color of where you can never go. For the blue is not in the place those miles away at the horizon, but in the atmospheric distance between you and the mountains.”

If horizons are usually distinct in their visual depiction, here they are the starting point of a long image series. Once in the darkroom, they assume an abstract shape, as if focusing on the few essential elements that make them — water, light and air.

Seascapes is available for purchase on the Loose Joints Publishing website.