What does a bench do in the night of the city while I sleep? Does it suffer from its sudden solitude or get lost finally in the contemplation of the moon on the water without anyone to obstruct the view? There is always in the photos of Manu and Greta Schnetzler a dual emotion: we are in turn seized by a feeling of devastation or overtaken by the peace that emanates from the forms empty of all humanity. The bench lives much more without the trace of a body.

Would Man would be too much in a sky so vast and so pure? The Schnetzler website opens by this quote: "It is horrifying that we have to fight our own government to save the environment." "-Ansel Adams". Nature and the city seem to have chased away humanity. And yet, their photographs by this use of an almost fantastic light slowed by the camera lens, reconciles me with the city as if it was an integral part of the splendor of nature.

You must see on their website their photo of a freeway ramp which draws its ascending curves and leads us well beyond the ordinary world: suddenly to heaven. “Sanctifying the local landscape is one of the roles of myth" says Joseph Campbell (The Power of Myth). Of real art also. And our local landscape is often one of the city where we have the need to discover hidden beauty. Meditative. Slow. Quiet as well. It is a full union, which is much more than a simple agreement or a reconciliation of opposites.