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Laurence Julien
@lore_explore
Landscape photographer based in France
As a child, I had always been attracted to an old Minolta camera my parents had. I remember I was already very much enjoying taking pictures of my little sister with it. I grew up in Auvergne, France, among beautiful mountains and an amazing nature. I was spending my days outside playing with wood sticks, making bows and arrows, building huts with my friends and cousins, going skiing, playing by the Dordogne river, playing in the rain, in the snow, going for bike rides, for walks, picking up nuts in the woods (I still can remember the smell)…. I can say I was a dreamer, always seeking for some new adventure games. I guess my passion from photography comes from there, as I was surrounded by beauty everywhere.
"My eyes were already enjoying the perspectives of the mountains and volcanoes, the details of nature. I remember I wanted to become a photographer or a flight attendant!"
Somehow I listened to grownups telling me that you don’t make a living with photography and I ended up as an executive assistant.
As kids we also enjoyed a lot watching cartoons (The adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Mysterious Cities of Gold…) which now, with hindsight, I can say they unconsciously gave me the will to travel. At school my favorite subject was English and after high school, I felt an urgent need to explore the world, so I left France to live a year in the US. Maybe Tom Sawyer influenced me in my choice here ha-ha, as the song of the cartoon in French was saying “America, symbol of Liberty”, I guess I was seeking freedom. I had been to Spain and England during school trips but this was my first big trip and that’s where I was able to afford myself my first own camera.
I was an au-pair, living close to New York and I enjoyed very much taking pictures of this city and its people and also recording all the sounds of this noisy town, which gives it a particular buzzling atmosphere. I was living in Connecticut and I really loved the forests and woods there, especially during fall. I also took the opportunity to travel inside the US. I did two road trips in a van with complete strangers in the south east and in the west which were really memorable times.
"I remember I was always seeking some kind of adventure, going trekking in the Grand Canyon, rafting on the Ocoee River, skydiving near Vegas… that was fun!"
When I came back to France, I felt lost. My life was boring. I started university in St-Etienne, an old grey and sad industrial town. I had been spending almost all my weekends in NYC the previous year so imagine the gap! HUGE! I had only one thing in mind: going back there and feeling this intensity again. I applied for a student exchange program and got to study my master year at The College of Charleston. I was supposed to study American literature and history, which of course I partly did, but ended up in sailing, swimming and sculpture classes too.
"Those two years abroad were such a great experience, I met awesome people from all over the world, and I guess that’s when I got bitten by the travel bug."
I don’t know if it’s a coincidence or not but my husband has many origins and our children are already immersed in different cultures. We always have been traveling with them since they were little, as we consider that this is a real source of cultural wealth and an open minded setting for them to get to know different ways of living and thinking. Unfortunately, some tragic events also make you learn that life is too short, way much shorter for some people, and that made me realize making memories is more important than making money, and buying trips more important than buying goods.
"As a matter of fact, I am not materialistic at all, but I just can’t get enough of exploring all the time."
"I simply find beauty and interest in each country I visit, which only stimulates this desire for exploration."
I absolutely loved the northern landscapes of Vietnam with these incredible rice fields everywhere. I also was stunned by the beauty and courage of the Hmong people, especially women whom I witnessed walking up the mountains while carrying big baskets on their backs, or bending all day in the rice fields. One of my favorite pictures is one of an old Hmong lady I took. Her smile, her eyes, her wrinkles, remind me of both my grandmothers and their marks of hard life and hard work outlined on their faces. Why do we want, me included, to get rid of those beautiful wrinkles? They’ve had 11 and 5 kids! They were warriors! I admire them. One of my grandmothers always defended the vulnerable persons, the poor, the minority.
"I think my tolerance and my curiosity to meet and respect different people come from her."
I also loved the wilderness of Scotland. The mix between modernity and tradition of the Japanese culture is fascinating too and I adored spending nights under the stars of the Wadi Rum desert in Jordan, sharing meals by the fire with Bedouins. It makes me sad to see all those camps getting built there and therefore spoiling the landscape. Those camps are always extended further into the desert to “offer” all the facilities to clients, tourists, when it’s actually more magical to sleep on the sand or by a rock or natural cavity and fully enjoy the view of the Milky Way! I’m fascinated by nature. During a trip to Indonesia in 2018, we had to face several earthquakes and a tsunami alert. We had just arrived by boat from Java to Bali, and we were enjoying our first dinner there right by the sea, when the earth started rumbling. This was one of the scariest moments of my life. It’s like you hear the earth showing you its anger.
"You realize you are such a tiny thing compared to nature at such moments."
One of the most magical natural phenomena I’ve been lucky to see are some northern lights in Finland and Norway. I’m impressed by nature in general: by mountains, volcanoes, deserts, forests, canyons, wilderness, all this diversity and beauty that we need to preserve. And I have to say that the more I travel, the more I’m concerned about our earth resources, especially water!
When I was in Jordan, I sadly witnessed that what was once a river, looks more like a stream now, which is one of the main causes of the low level of the Dead Sea. This is a real ecological and geopolitical tragedy to me. Likewise when we were in Kenya and Tanzania, I could have cried in front of Kilimanjaro when I sadly observed that it lost 80% of its snow and that it won’t last for eternity! It therefore impacts the wildlife since the water that comes from Kilimanjaro forms numerous springs and swamps for the animals, like in Amboseli park for instance. Guides were telling us that the climate changes have impacted the migrations a lot too. I have to say that we had seen some poverty in South East Asia, but in Kenya and Tanzania, several times we’ve been asked for water. I mean, WATER! I can tell you this is really striking and violent.
"Some Maasaï children were walking such long distances to find some water. We just get it from the tap. But what if water does not come out of it some day?"
Some people tell me “isn’t it too harsh for your kids to witness this?” Well… We have brought our kids to Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum (I’d say it’s more a memorial) in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. It certainly is a hard visit. It is really hard to see how people were imprisoned, interrogated and tortured by the Khmer Rouge regime. But I think it’s important to do so, so that we don’t make the same mistakes. Unfortunately some forget those kinds of tragedies. I want my children to be messengers of peace. And to do so, they need to be aware of the past and contemporary issues. Traveling is also learning – of course sometimes traveling is staying by a nice beach enjoying some good food, but you also need to see the reality of the locals. And the reality of some people is to get up early, to walk miles to get some water… indeed.
"So I like to travel, I like to be a witness, and I like to do what I can to spread awareness and contribute for the better."
With the pandemic situation, it was quite hard for me not being able to plan any trip. But it was not conceivable not to go somewhere last summer. That’s partly why we purchase Charly, our 4X4 Discovery. As we did not know which border would be opened, we wanted to be flexible in our journey. We figured a van would be perfect for that. We had experienced the campervan in Scotland and we loved the fact that we could eat and sleep anywhere but it was really not easy to find parking lots as soon as we were entering cities. That’s why we wanted a smaller vehicle which would also allow us to go everywhere and off-track roads as well. It was quite challenging to try to convert it into almost a van as we had not much time to do it ourselves since most of the companies who could have made something ready-to-go were off production because of COVID-19.
We still have to make some adjustments though. It took us quite a long time at the beginning to get everything settled for the night and to pack in the morning. So for this trip through Switzerland, Italy, and Austria, we combined bivouac nights, nights in campsites and hotels as well, especially when the weather was really too bad like in the Dolomites. When you travel this way, you notice that water is a big issue, and that you need to save it for the next day in case you don’t find any anywhere.
We all have understood, I hope, with this situation, that we had to travel more respectfully and responsibly. Having that kind of car is not perfectly and totally eco-friendly, but it’s better than taking a plane and I do really hope we can find sustainable solutions for travelers in the future because I cannot imagine my life without traveling.
"My happy places are everywhere as long as I am surrounded by nature and beautiful landscapes."
As long as I can satisfy my thirst for discovering new places and new cultures, and as long as I have my camera in my hands. Then, I feel free, happy, I feel like I’m being myself, belonging here and there at the present time, at the present moment. And I feel even more happy when people who cannot travel like I do, thank me because they can travel a little bit through my pictures and videos. It’s one of the most rewarding things for me.
The pieces of the puzzle finally all come together. So at the end my story might not be a succession of coincidences after all. One of my favorite books is The Alchemist from Paolo Coelho, which teaches us to listen to our hearts, and the signs strewn along our lives: “It’s your Personal Legend that you have always wanted to accomplish. Everyone, when they are young, knows what their Personal Legend is. At that point in their lives, everything is clear and everything is possible.” Follow your personal legend, listen to the kid within you.
"Sometimes I wish I had listened to that kid who wanted to become a photographer. I might become one, someday. A travel one of course."
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