Seán

Thomas Gauthier

2022 — Canada

About this series

Seán lives in the Canadian Rockies, in British Columbia. He lives in a small village in the Kootenays (a name derived from the first nations who inhabited this region). Seán lives at nature’s pace, consuming little and enjoying the beauty, silence of the place. Daily chores punctuate his winter days. His asceticism is based on “happy sobriety” with respect for nature, a “dense” life with an affective relationship to things and places, in contrast to the artificial pleasures of industrial civilization. His morning routine includes gymnastics and running in the forest that surrounds his house. In disregard of our world’s rules, his lifestyle remains traditional, but is healthier and more modern than most of his contemporaries who are seeking healing methods. Both the subject and the environment are important.
Photographs oscillate between intimacy and solitude, coming and going in a hushed silence, alternating between snow-covered landscapes and Seán’s house enveloped by this wild environment.
Throughout this series, I question our relationship with our environment. Seán emancipates himself from all identity to become a simple human being. He embodies a forgotten wisdom and embraces the realities of the world.

Photographer: Thomas Gauthier
Nationality: French
Based in: Paris, France
Website: gauthierphotographie.com
Instagram: @thomasgauthier.photographie