Samuel Féron’s Matter!: A Museum of the Earth’s Forgotten Dreams

What happens when Nothingness tires of its own infinite dominion and decides to relinquish its throne? In Matter!, Samuel Féron dares to answer this cosmic riddle—not with words alone, but through a breathtaking 26-minute meditation crafted entirely from his own photographs.

Féron, a master cartographer of Earth's forsaken edges, has long been our silent witness to the world's extremities, from the blistered volcanoes of Hawaii to the glacial bones of Iceland. Here, in his first photographic film, he doesn't just capture nature, he summons it, as if whispering forgotten creation myths back into being.

Divided into six poetic movements, Matter! unfurls like an ancient scroll: Nothingness surrenders, Matter rises, Time scars, Man desecrates, and, finally, Spirit dreams anew. Each frame, whether the cracked earth of Ethiopia or the ethereal fogs of Jordan is less a photograph and more a relic, excavated from some primordial dreamscape.

The color grading is exquisite, the sound design hums with the melancholia of archival melodies, and the imagery feels almost sculpted rather than captured solid, defiant, aching with quiet grandeur. Watching Matter! feels less like seeing a film and more like wandering through a modern art museum installation where the frames bleed into the soul.

Yet, if Matter grapples with Time, Féron’s film occasionally wrestles with its own pacing. At moments, the narrative rhythm stretches a little thin, and the absence of a guiding voice leaves the audience longing for a hand to hold through the immensity. One can only imagine the heights a carefully woven narration or a touch of environmental soundscape could have reached.

Still, how many works dare to attempt so much? How often does a film make you feel the vertigo of existence itself?

Samuel Féron does not merely photograph the world, he translates it into myth. Matter! is both eulogy and genesis, a visual poem that asks: When Matter meets Man, who is the real conqueror—and who is the memory?

It is imperfect. It is profound. It is unforgettable.