Margot Wallard: Natten

French photographer Margot Wallard�s (born 1978) Natten is a heartfelt response to the experience of witnessing her brother�s slow and untimely death, an experience she described as a �violent process� for all concerned.Undertaken in the wake of loss, and fraught with the contradictions of mourning, Natten is a post-traumatic visual exploration and an attempt to reaffirm and claim life. It is comprised of images of dead birds, mice, frogs, snakes and stoats; black-and-white photos of ice formations in woodland areas mingled with ghostly nighttime nudes (self-portraits); images of insects; color landscape sequences in which nude self-portraits again figure; a series of images of animal skeletons; and still lifes of natural mineral and botanical formations. �The dead animals or the organic elements found during my expeditions constantly referred me to this notion of perpetual renewal,� Wallard writes, �to this contradiction between normality and the brutality of life.�