Dystopian dreams from the retouching palette
By day, Fabien Barrau may be best known as head of the studio at the Paris-based Mikros Print, part of the Mikros MPC group of visual effect experts. By night, though…
Whales cruise past an underwater Arc de Triomphe. The Coliseum partly disappears within sand dunes, almost no trace of the surrounding Rome survives. Elsewhere, the decaying towers of Chicago are heavily clad in rainforest-like foliage. Take your pick – and welcome to Barrau’s masterly retouching of our world, warning of the possible effects of climate change.
In a set of images called News From The Future, Barrau playfully but pointedly delivers a powerful comment on climate change. With a combination of his own drone photography, stock images, and many hours of elaborate photo artistic interventions, he has been delivering a series of works that has gained an eager following on Instagram and started to get noticed more widely.
He says he wants to create for his viewers “the same feeling as the archaeologists of the 19th century who discovered Pompeii”.
With references to many of his favourite movies and other sources of inspiration, Barrau’s images step beyond the standard of super-manipulation to become spectacular visual warnings. They may be extreme but they capture in single images the horrors that climate change could bring.
Chicago reimagined by Barrau after climate change
Back in the day job, Barrau’s hand and eye can be found discreetly expressed within the manipulated pixels of many of the finer fashion and luxury advertising to be seen. But his Instagram fans will hope he can continue to build out the personal vision, scary as it may be.
