Built on sand
Maurienne Valley, June 2013
This photograph was taken with a “new iPad”, a digital Swiss Army knife which sophistication has obsoleted its predecessor, which was still at the forefront twelve months earlier. Both have in common one component, sand, essential to the glass screen on which fingers exert pressure to save images in an electronic memory. Between the rough grains massively present next to the sign and the smooth mirror under my fingers, machines produced heat and then a sudden cooling.
Sands and stones have always been there, as almost everywhere on planet Earth, until we took them and mark ourappropriation. Here, it is therefore 50 years that the ground is dug, filtered and screened to obtain regular pebbles and sand for a thousand uses and clients. Or perhaps it was already operating for many centuries, but the heirs of a recent purchaser suddenly deciding to assert their possession, and turning, like other businesses, this duration as a sign of quality.
Nevertheless, this long story can end: the sand is becoming a rare resource , and quarries, as well as beaches, are depleted due to the strength of our electronic and concrete voracity. This sign will soon be not the mark of a living memory to maintain, but that, fleeting, of a souvenir.