hurrengoa
landscape scale edouard decam & inhar imaz   I  edouard decam Which are the tools that we have in order to watch a mountain landscape before us, to fulfill an emotional relationship with it and to understand that connection?
Apparently, we have two contradictory elements: the action of the human being on the one hand and the complements of the landscape on the other. We can consider these as a whole, one that will help us create a close relationship with a place, one that highlights a new emotion and emphasizes the deep character of that place.
Have a look at the static construction: an aqueduct.
Have a look at an imperceptible movement: a dam.
Water, aqueducts, compare the landscape, understand the environment and get to understands it limits. Mountain dams are much more than an architectural work, more than a wall between two valleys.
It is an aesthetic body, a limit, a set up, two autonomous groups that live with the flowing of the waters: the essential element; water and mass volume, the essence of the construction.
The dam, above all, being considered a technical element, is fitted into a place and thus, the perspective changes the point of view of the landscape and the valley. Aqueducts and dams create a new valley, a new landscape.
This technical construction plays with the environment. Measures, water volumes, electricity and the power of turbines are hidden behind the new point of view of the valley and so, we no longer consider it a number or a measure but a new landscape.
It was a mountain landscape before, now, it is a new one. A landscape is not an ecological constant element, but an artistic creation.
Photography helps us highlight this new look and narrow and understand the relationship and limits between history, scales, aqueducts and landscape. It is the encounter of the two masses what is needed to understand the scale of the landscape.

(The scale of the landscape is a research done with the financial help of the EDF foundation).