Nature nominee

In this series, Selim Allee transports us to an otherworldly landscape where past and future collide. Captured in stark black and white within the depths of an active volcano, these images depict tourists walking through its vast enclosure, their presence evoking the cautious first steps of explorers on an uncharted planet. Amidst the hardened lava, resilient vegetation has begun to take root, echoing the slow reclamation of life in a place once shaped by fire. Inspired by 19th and 20th-century speculative fiction, the artist reimagines this terrestrial setting as if it were the surface of Mars, newly inhabited by an alien civilization. This interplay between reality and imagination challenges us to consider how history, science, and the unknown intertwine. The result is a dreamlike vision of exploration and rediscovery, where traces of an enigmatic past meet the quiet resilience of nature.

Selim Allee is a screenwriter and photographer based in Paris and Rennes, France. His photographs challenge us to see beyond the obvious.

Through a meticulous process of isolation and composition, he extracts fragments of space—textured surfaces, abstract geometries, unexpected color juxtapositions—to reveal hidden narratives within the mundane.

By shifting perspective, he invites us to reconsider the relationship between form and meaning. A hike in la Réunion becomes an otherworldly ballade through a barren landscape ; a picture of the floor a close-up on the interactions of matter.

In a world saturated with images, Selim Allee offers a fresh gaze—one that does not document but rather interprets. Through his lens, the familiar becomes extraordinary, and in that transformation, a new story emerges.