Thierry ArdouinHistoires de graines

The seed is a marvel of appearance, a perfection of form and colour. It possesses a morphology that is both necessary and bizarre, capable of arousing astonishment, questioning or contemplation.
Chosen, lit and framed with the greatest care, the seeds photographed by Thierry Ardouin disturb our subjectivity as spectators: they become symbols which, far from being generic images, question our relationship to origin. From the emergence of agriculture more than 10,000 years ago to the questions raised by today’s hybrid seeds, via the discovery of the uses of seeds across cultures and eras, the book explores the issues surrounding diversity.
From domestication to marketing, seeds speak of the evolution of our social and cultural practices. They tell the great story of mankind: their distribution, acclimatisation and regulation echo the globalisation, growth of production and acculturation of our societies. Most of them come from the collections of the Muséum national d’histoire naturelle, these wild or cultivated seeds from all over the world fascinate by their formal beauty: colours, textures, contours, appearances, they catch the eye and question our perceptions.
Accompanied by a corpus of texts by botanists, ethnologists and agronomic engineers, Thierry Ardouin’s images open up areas for reflection on the future of our societies and their ability to imagine tomorrow. How can we consume without degrading, produce without impoverishing, live without destroying?