On the occasion of Les Rencontres de la photographie d'Arles 2016, this book brings together rare photographs taken in the 1890s through the 1950, throughout the world.

This corpus of photographs from the Jean-Marie Donat Collection gives the concept of landscape a greater breadth, and, with it, a more penetrating mystery. The collector, bt an act of tilting, switches the original print from a figurative image of a landscape to an abstract visual, as a reality rollover.

"The visual experience of space and our consciousness of it are so closely related that we have no idea what determines the one or what is dependent on the other. Landscapes mirrored in water, like so many chance Rorschach tests, confirm and cause the mystery of photography. Even though what we see—a set of signs registered by a user—is real, in no way is the world further explained by it. The photographic work has its own logic, which can be enigmatic or occasionally disturbing, but which is always exhilarating."