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Paysages sismiques invites us to penetrate to the heart of matter, and more specifically to the earth's mantle, to discover what happens during an earthquake: fusion, dilation, fragmentation, explosion - under the effect of heat, rocks metamorphose and reveal their mysteries, invisible to the naked eye.

This project is the fruit of a collaboration between photographer Thomas Gizolme and geophysics researcher Alexandre Schubnel, Director of the Geology Laboratory at the École normale supérieure in Paris. Within this laboratory, the researchers have created two machines: one that reproduces earthquakes in an attempt to understand their mechanisms and anticipate their development, and a second that produces images of molten matter. The latter shows rocks liquefying, creating a fascinating geological geography. Thomas Gizolme has used this body of photographs to create a book in which the marvelous meets the scientific: readers can discover unsuspected landscapes hundreds of kilometers beneath our feet.

Photographer, producer and artistic director Thomas Gizolme's projects have taken him from the endangered landscapes of the Kirabati Islands in the Pacific to the icy heights of Zermatt, in Switzerland. Produced on a variety of photographic supports - small Polaroids, large-format prints, film alteration, the effect of cold and altitude on the gelatin in the film... - Gizolme's images are often dreamlike, sometimes verging on the abstract. His books include Abstrakt Zermatt (Steidl, 2017) and White Isles of the South Sea (Agence VU, 2018).

Alexandre Schubnel is Director of Research at the CNRS and the Geology Laboratory at the École normale supérieure in Paris, working on the mechanics and physics of earthquakes. At the Laboratory, he and his teams have set up a world-unique acoustic device, enabling in situ monitoring of the deformation of a rock sample subjected to high pressure and temperature. His work was awarded the CNRS Bronze Medal in 2014.