As an immersion in the construction world, Terragraphy is an invitation to distance ourselves from energy-intensive and polluting materials such as concrete to discover the raw earth alternative. 

Wishing to transmit the desire to put our hands in the earth to reconnect with this living body that has vanished beneath the asphalt of our cities, Cinzia Romanin and Thomas Noceto went, since 2021, to meet inhabitants in the Belgian and French territories, whose built heritage is rich with earth-based constructions that have stood the test of time. Fighting against lobbies and regulation laws, those people are defending a local material with many virtues which can be reshaped ad infinitum and still reintegrated into its original soil without any alteration. As an atlas of the world of raw clay craftsmanship, this project reveals a relatively unknown imagery made up of vernacular tools, specific gestures transmitted from generation to generation and reused excavated soils which are still too often considered as waste by the industry.

Inspired by Lavoisier’s idea that “Nothing is lost, nothing is created, everything is transformed”, this visual research proposes to enhance raw earth as a creative body. In this sense, by using handcrafted clay-made films and earth pigments prints, this project has then been an opportunity to invent sensitive explorations by revealing each landscape through its own materiality.

A part of this project was made possible thanks to an artistic residency organised by the Diaphane photographic center and funded by the French Ministry of Culture.