Sharon Draghi
Pastoral
This project is about a small village in Burgundy, France – the village where my husband’s parents met when they were both 5 years old. I’ve been coming to this town, a place of family reunions, every summer for the last 20 years. I’m always fascinated by how it appears to be largely untouched by time. This is a village of stone houses, many dating back several hundred years, with a population of 192 people. There is no commerce here, not one single shop.
Pastoral is a meditation on the rhythms of rural life, in a village where the landscape is inseparable from history, memory and the passage of time. Created over repeated visits, the photographs explore a quiet and nuanced understanding of place-one shaped by seasonal cycles, agricultural traditions, and the lives of those who inhabit the countryside.
At a time when our connection to the natural world feels increasingly fragile, Pastoral offers a quiet reflection on the importance of preserving not only landscapes but also the sense of wonder they inspire.
“Don’t you wish you could take a single childhood memory and blow it up into a bubble and live inside it forever?”
― Sarah Addison Allen, Lost Lake
Pastoral is a meditation on the rhythms of rural life, in a village where the landscape is inseparable from history, memory and the passage of time. Created over repeated visits, the photographs explore a quiet and nuanced understanding of place-one shaped by seasonal cycles, agricultural traditions, and the lives of those who inhabit the countryside.
At a time when our connection to the natural world feels increasingly fragile, Pastoral offers a quiet reflection on the importance of preserving not only landscapes but also the sense of wonder they inspire.
“Don’t you wish you could take a single childhood memory and blow it up into a bubble and live inside it forever?”
― Sarah Addison Allen, Lost Lake