L’Indifférence des Étoiles (The Indifference of the Stars) is my first photography book.

The series focuses on our shared quest for meaning and the difficulty we each experience when we confront the miraculous (at times meaningless) fact of our existence. The stars, somehow, become a shelter for the mind and help us bear the brevity of human life.

The book is divided in three parts: birth, life, and death. The images presented here are my attempt to find some answers to our existence here—to create some order in the chaos. The three parts are separated by views of the stars and the deepest parts of space.

Perhaps the book is best summarized by the quote at the start, from the Portuguese literary figure Fernando Pessoa: ”I lift my eyes and look at the stars, which make no sense at all.”

—Julien Mauve

If you like this series, we recommend these previous features: Smoke, a poetic project that captures Iceland’s unique topography; Yusurika, a series shot by a Japanese photographer that transforms the landscape into a fantastical world; and Stars, a striking project that couples photographs of ancient trees with images of celestial phenomena.