L’Observatoire photographique de l’A 89 : une démarche abandonnée au bord de l’autoroute

• Main Author: Pierre Enjelvin
• Format: Article
• Language: fra
• Published: Agrocampus Angers, Ecole nationale supérieure du paysage, ENP Blois, ENSAP Bordeaux, ENSAP Lille 2016-12-01
• Series: Projets de Paysage
• Subjects: infrastructure; regional development; landscape dynamics; diachronic series; evaluation of public policies
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/paysage/6732

On the occasion of the building of the motorway from Clermont-Ferrand to Bordeaux, the Observatoire photographique des territoires du Massif central, or OPTMC, (Photographic Observatory of the Massif Central Region) proposed a photographic observation of the landscape to take into account the impacts on the landscape of the new infrastructure. The project, which attracted a great deal of interest, was selected in 2000 to receive support from the 1% Landscape Development programme for its preliminary studies, and was partly financed with funds reserved for the implementation of the incentive policy. Eight years after the end of the mission, the article reviews the entire operation which was also intended to evaluate the results of the 1% policy. It retraces the different stages of the operation which was conceived as a joint effort involving a steering committee, academics, students in landscape architecture and geography, and photographers, in order to define a method for interpreting the images produced during seven years and to bring the results of this work (photographic series and compared interpretations of these series) to the knowledge of the partners of the A89 Photographic Observatory via an Internet site. It also questions the reasons for what was considered as a motorway project which went pear-shaped... at least regarding one of the initial objectives which was that of evaluating by means of photography a public policy in favour of the landscape.