It's two in the morning. I'm woken both by Lou's cries for her mother's breast and by the waves crashing against our house, enveloped in foam and noise. Yes, I remember now: we're confined to a beach house in Ipioca, in the Northeast of Brazil. Saltwater trickles down the walls of our fortress. Covid deaths rain down around us. My family is far away. The beaches are deserted. Solitude reigns supreme, a marine solitude.

Under a blazing sun just after dawn, I am reborn. Gigantic clouds billow across the sky and vanish moments later. In the tropics, there is a special quality of light that penetrates your soul: an unheard-of violence, yet not fully developed. Absolute black reigns there as a fleeting master. So does pristine white. I opened my palette to this profound darkness, to this total virginity.

This morning, I rediscover the luminous, solid, and soothing stillness of the ocean's surface and its fine ripples pushed by the mischievous trade winds. I also rediscover the inspiring calm of the horizon line, the ambiguity of sea and sky merging into one. Sometimes one wonders if the sea exists, if it is not merely the horizon. The marine horizon, this thin space eternally similar yet different, carries within it the essence of a standing wave. It limits and simultaneously opens onto the invisible. It confers upon the world a meaning that is the product of a sensory experience capable of a singular aesthetic interpretation. "Beauty is nothing other than the infinite contained within a contour," according to Victor Hugo.

Later, hidden behind my surgical mask and equipped with my favorite photographic prosthesis, I leave the protective cocoon of our home for my daily journey. Alone! I set off in search of images of my confined horizon, a narrow strip of sand a few kilometers long, bordered by two estuaries and a palm grove. Distance does not make the journey. The journey is not the destination.

Like every morning, I rediscover this marvelous and majestic intertwining of land, water, and sky.

Excerpt from the introductory text to the book "Marine Solitudes".