Gure Bazterrak (Our Land)

In the distance, there’s the ocean. But here, it’s the land of high, rounded mountains, of rivers, of pastures. Of those who cross, share and tend it. This land is the Basque hinterland. Straddling France and Spain, nestled between the Pyrenees and the Bay of Biscay, it’s a proud land of wild beauty, often fantasized about and surrounded by a mystical mist, as if to better protect it from foreign eyes.

Anne Rearick nevertheless crossed this misty barrier by setting foot for the first time, in 1990, in the small village of Donibane Garazi (Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port). Since then, and for more than 30 years, Rearick has returned again and again, establishing a deep bond with the inhabitants over generations. And therein lies the strength of Rearick’s work: a deep, sincere feeling for the people she photographs. It’s not naive romanticism, but an open, tender and generous gaze, characteristic of her long-term work and her humanist vision of photography. Her honest understanding of the photographer’s work is evident in her square compositions, where concentration of vision and subtle black and white tones harmonize to convey not only the beauty of the Basque country, but also the reality of its raw land and of its rural world we see evolving over the decades.