In January 2024, he travelled alone across the American Midwest for two weeks, from Illinois to the Badlands, covering nearly 7,000 kilometres through cold and snow.
He approached this journey as a space for photography, working exclusively with medium-format film.
Each morning began at dawn, shaped by the silence of empty roads. The car became both a refuge and a vantage point, a place to prepare images, adjust settings, and find shelter from the freezing wind.
America has been photographed endlessly, yet he felt the need to experience it directly, to move through it and confront it on his own terms. Gas stations, motels, wooden houses, weathered signs, and abandoned cars appeared differently in the stillness of winter. Covered in snow and stripped of distraction, they revealed themselves without artifice or preconception.
The cold dictated a precise rhythm: stepping out for a few minutes, composing the frame, releasing the shutter, then retreating to warmth. Each action required effort, both physical and mental. The road became a space of concentration, where every mile demanded attention and every image discovered gave purpose to the journey.
Winter Sleep unfolds as a passage through a landscape in suspension. It traces a personal mapping of territory, but also the experience of moving through it alone. Cold, silence, effort, patience, light, and colour all shape the work. Each image carries the imprint of the body, the landscape, and the solitude that define this journey. What emerges is not only a vision of America, but an exploration of what it evokes and how it is absorbed into his way of seeing.
About Fabien DendiƩvel
Fabien DendiĆ©vel is a French photographer born in Paris and based in Montpellier. His work engages with quiet, minimal spaces where human presence is evoked through absence and the slow imprint of time. Educated at the Ćcole du Louvre, he works exclusively with analogue processes, using medium-format and large-format 4Ć5 cameras, and constructs each image with precise attention to light, structure, and composition.
Focusing on American landscapes and modern architecture, his practice reflects a rigorous and contemplative approach to form and space. His work has been exhibited in France and internationally, and has received several awards. [Official Website]
