Françoise V grew up in Botswana, where the wild places of Africa were not scenery but home. This bond with the land has shaped everything she’s made since.

Her latest body of work, What the Land Remembers, turns that attention toward what connects rather than what stands alone – an elephant’s skin holding the trace of every river it has stood in, a bird doing quiet work on a giraffe’s cheek, a trail worn by more feet than one. Nothing in this landscape holds itself up by itself.

Her work sits within this tension between presence and disappearance, beauty and urgency, what’s here now and what’s already at risk. It is this awareness that shapes her practice, directing it to give back to the places and wildlife that made it possible.

This is photography as a form of recordkeeping, and as a way of paying attention while there’s still time.

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