Roots

Roots is a personal photo and book project that explores the quiet presence of nature within the urban landscape of Paris. Coming from a city embraced by mountains and fjords, I found myself longing for the closeness of nature after relocating to Paris. This project began as a way to navigate that absence—a slow, attentive search for organic traces within the built environment.

Photographed entirely on 35mm analog film, Roots moves through the dense rhythm of the city and out toward the wooded edges of Bois de Vincennes. The tactile nature of film, with its grain and imperfections, echoes the fleeting textures I was drawn to: the saturated green of moss growing on stone, the rough bark of trees, the scattered freckles on a friend’s skin. These details—small, ephemeral, and often overlooked—became a way of reconnecting to what felt distant.

Interwoven into the landscape are a series of portraits of my friend, Sofia. Her vivid, radiant presence—playful, open, unpredictable—became a human thread through the work, a counterpart to the organic forms I was documenting. I’m drawn to the interplay between the human body and nature—the way skin can mirror the texture of bark, and how freckles echo the irregular, imperfect patterns found in the natural world. In Sofia, I found the same vibrancy I sought in nature: alive, spontaneous, uncontained. Her presence blurs the boundary between the human and the wild, reminding me that we carry the same rawness and complexity within us.

At its core, Roots is a meditation on contrast and connection—between city and forest, structure and softness, permanence and change. It reflects a longing to hold what is fleeting, to give presence to what is overlooked. Through this work, I seek out the places where the city softens, where something untamed still breathes beneath the surface. It is a way of seeing, and of remembering—how even in unfamiliar ground, our roots can still find something to hold onto. I try to catch the pulse of something in-between: a trace, a breath, a root reaching quietly for ground.

- OO