Sophie Ristelhueber
[Photographer, b. 1949, Paris, lives in Paris.]

 We have at our disposal modern techniques for seeing everything, apprehending everything, yet we see nothing. 
 I have these obsessions that I do not completely understand, with the deep mark, with the ruptured surface, with scars and traces, traces that human beings are leaving on the earth. It is not a comment on the environment... it is metaphysical. 
 What prompted me to make these pictures [of bomb-cratered roads] was the impression that the ground was ripped by the shock, that it was swallowing itself. 
 My real interest is traveling the world’s tormented places and revealing the scars and the traces on the ground. I am dedicated to the earth.