Le contrat naturel

Galerie Greta Meert, Brussels, presents "Le contrat naturel" (The Natural Contract), an exhibition that uses Michel Serres' 1990 essay as a conceptual framework. The exhibition explores the philosopher's ideas on the repositioning of humanity in relation to its environment, particularly in light of the ecological crisis. The show focuses on photographic works, a medium chosen for its capacity for direct, seemingly objective representation while also allowing for ambiguity and critical distance. The works test the limits of Serres' philosophy, examining photography as an instrument of attention rather than illustration.

The exhibition highlights several thematic lines. One is the shift from nature as a passive backdrop to nature as a witness, with images often depicting urban landscapes, transitional zones, or damaged environments that bear human traces. Another theme is urbanisation as a historical process, revealing the layered and often fragmented narrative of city growth. The works also implicitly critique the failure of the classical social contract, which excludes the non-human world, by showing landscapes where nature is reduced to raw material or logistical surface. Photography serves to make the consequences of this asymmetry visible, connecting local places to broader global systems and highlighting the relational nature of responsibility.