Le Pays Clair results from several arts residencies undertaken by Thibaut Cuisset in the Camargue at the invitation of Laetitia Talbot from the Asphodèle Association in partnership with the Tour du Valat. A unique area that continues to fascinate painters and artists, like all landscapes the apparently wild and natural Camargue is in fact the result of man’s labour, which has shaped it over the centuries, while confronted with the brute force of the elements that defy each other there. Vegetal, mineral, liquid, the Camargue’s luminous panorama offers Thibaut Cuisset an incomparable field of exploration, seemingly in perfect harmony with his photographic quest. Horizontality, a theme that Cuisset has never stopped probing since his first countryside studies, here seems like a mystery that he tries to decipher. In the Carmague, as he has done elsewhere, Cuisset puts landscapes in the spotlight. Initially, he undertakes to break down fragments (sea, ricefields, sand, canals, beach huts) and to draw up an inventory of elements (light, colours, atmosphere). From this preliminary observation, knowledge and intuition grow and go on to underpin the structure, story, and construction of the sought-after image; a primitive puzzle that the pho- tographer organises and magnifies. Miles away from any ‘impressionist’ aim, the vision that Cuisset offers us of the Camargue world is to be savoured in pure contemplation. A contemplation that invites us to ‘enter into landscape’ like an actor walking onto a stage, for Thibaut Cuisset’s art does indeed lead us to an intimate way of inhabiting and appropriating places.