Nejma Kachaou - VALS → book - preface

Vals, through the eyes of Nejma Kachaou, is a set of strong lines leading in every direction. We are made to climb up summits, dive into the earth, top and bottom intertwining - and how important are they, really, those old markers ? The composition delves into the secret language of mountains - elements and matter can very well recreate themselves as they wish. Sometimes, rock pierces through the picture. Stone is almost conjured. And when a long enclosure wall, etched in the white snow, turns into a geometrical (and melancholy) sculpture, we think of a mysterious language, a frail attempt of men to reach out to God, to the cosmos. Then, and only then, do we understand that this series of pictures forms a riddle, a mysterious and poetic sentence, looking for its secret rhythm. A chant of pictures from which the sacred would emerge ? Water and air are vibrating. There is so much life, so much matter. But Vals is also all those paths on the edge of the world. On the edge of our mind. Paths of creation: that of the earth that moves, lives and grows bigger, that of the artist shaping her gaze. No traces of man can be seen. Only remain, alone, a net standing as a vain frontier, stirring ruins overshadowed by rock, frail chalets melting into the dark stone, flimsy memories of what used to be. Because the mountains that Nejma Kachaou roams are neither friendly nor hostile. They are hieratic, the beginning and the end of the world. Unfailing and peaceful. And their time is infinite.

- Laureline Mattiussi

VALS 2015 - 2021

This project imposed itself by going to Vals every year.

Magnetized by the place, I began to photograph these mountains, frontal and omnipresent.

Like Peter Zumthor’s thermal baths, they place you in a dialogue with nature and yourself.

The glittering stone of Vals, raw. The hieratic Zervreilasee and Zervreilahorn.

I always and again scrutinize this purifying land of Graubünden.