interview between TEMPE STORM COLE and ALICE DISON.

Info

Photographer: Tempé Storm Cole

Tempé Storm Cole is a Franco-American photographer based in Paris. She holds a Bachelor's degree in Art History from the Sorbonne and a Masters in Fine Arts from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure d'Arts de Paris Cergy. The interactions between bodies and the environment around them are central to her work, with a particular focus on the natural world and domestic spaces. Searching for feelings, sensations and fragments of beauty like little collected memories.With a sense of melancholy and nostalgia, Cole displays her images through installations and publications. She has exhibited her work in France and the United States.

Project

Images featured from various projects and personal work.

Some images featured from More water than the eye could see:

More water than the eye could see is a photographic project that blends documentary and sensitive exploration of the territory, conducted around Lake Lanier in the southern United States (Georgia). This artificial lake, created in 1957, bears all the characteristics of flooded valleys: uprooted inhabitants, ghost stories, and mysteries passed down through generations. It is a frustrating place because it contains all the answers, which seem to be within reach. Scanning the lake and walking along its shore, French-American photographer Tempé Storm Cole searches for clues to this painful history. Beneath the surface of the water, she tries to make out the remains of buried villages. The landscape resists, revealing little. The idyllic setting is ideal for vacationers, but its shiny red soil, rich in mica, gives the air a strange feel.
Designed as a pocket-sized visual guide to the shoreline, with a map to help visitors find their way around this vast territory, More water than the eye could see was presented at an exhibition at the Progress Gallery in Paris in April 2025.

Additional images featured from It's the tide that burns us:

Solastalgia - a neologism coined by environmental philosopher Glenn Albrecht in 2003 - is the expression of the link between ecosystem distress and psychological distress. It’s also the pain we feel when we realize that our habitat has been irreparably degraded. This collection of images is born of a deep sense of anguish, of nostalgia for an increasingly uncertain future. Far from being pessimistic, this body of images offers a gentle yet urgent pause. What does it mean to be “at home” beyond the domestic? What physical and emotional relationships do we have with the places where we live, and how do we inhabit our world? The project took place in different parts of the world: France, the Canary Islands and in the USA. This photographic essay explores the symbiotic relationship we share with our environment, depicting our shared joy at the beauty of nature and our sadness at environmental degradation. All this is expressed plastically in a quest for light, exploring layers, reflections and sensations.

Interview

AD: I am always in awe of the softness in your images. The feeling as if the viewer is there and experiencing the moment with you. When photographing the subjects, do you find it important to know the subjects to gain this feeling?

TSC: (Thank you Alice <3)

It’s true I am often intimate with my subjects. The way I photograph brings me physically close to what ever I’m photographing. I like skin, textures, details, gestures, I have to be up in the subjects space. So even if I don’t know the people I’m shooting, the actual physical closeness creates some intimacy I think. Having your portrait taken is quite a vulnerable experience. People are used to being photographed and photographing themselves, we all have these universal poses - the smile, the hand gesture, the head tilt, a trendy pout - so it’s even more precious to capture that moment where they let you in a little you know. The silent contract that says « ok I’ll let you peek inside for a while». It’s what I love.

AD: Which brings me to wonder where you draw inspiration? I can feel you have a deep attachment to your project It's the tide that burns us.

And can only imagine that project hits deep and personal for you, what you are feeling today with the current state of the world.

TSC: Most of my pictures are taken in summer and away from home, during trips. I have a hard time photographing Paris. I’ve lived there my whole life but it’s really not my favorite place to make images, I find nature much more stimulating. It surprised the city girl in me to be so drawn to sun and plants. It’s the tide that burns us collects images taken over a couple of years, that foreshadowed what I can now vocalize as fears about our future on our planet. It’s simultaneously a cry for help of the natural world, and bodies trying to be a part of it again. Bodies that are wet, submerged, escaping the burnt landscapes with concerned looks. It’s only looking back that I see that to me all my photos of sunsets are burning landscapes. I’m not trying to be pessimistic, It’s appreciation for our resilient world.

AD: I know you have been surrounded by photography since you were young, was that a natural thing for you to pick up a camera to express your art? Do you remember the first image when you realized, oh Im pretty good at this…. I should keep photographing.

TSC: It’s true I’ve been very encouraged since a young age to practice art, my parents and their close friends being artists. I arrived to photography through film, I really wanted to make films when I as young, and did a lot of little movies. I realized how much time and how many people where involved and I was like « ok I’m too impatient for that ».It really started clicking as I was growing out of teenagehood and photographed my friends all the time. Circling back to your first question, it was a lot of very intimate moments, with friends that really trusted me to photograph them. They would says things along the lines of « I usually hate getting my picture taken but with you I feel safe » and that felt very good to hear, I thought maybe I was on to something.

AD: That is such a great compliment, to have your subjects to feel at ease with you. I can see as I know you personally, and can only imagine others can feel it too thru your images.

AD: In More water than the eye could see, this project has a strong documentary approach to it. Do you find yourself gravitating towards documentary work for projects, or something more you pull from for an idea?

TSC: More Water than the eye could see, is quite different from what I’ve done before. When we buried my grandmother in Georgia in 2021, I found out this giant lake near Atlanta, Lake Lanier, was in fact artificial and like all artificial lakes, there are parts of a submerged town and all the ghost stories that go with it. It got me curious enough to want to do a photo project about it. I prepared a lot before I took the trip alone, not knowing what I would find once I was there, it was detective work.

It’s the first project I do without people. Only water, trees, reflections, shadows, maybe ghosts. The place is quite eerie, and I feel it infused the images in the book. The original approach was absolutely documentary, but even if I don’t mention it in the book, the project originated in grief and grew into something that was more about feelings and sensations about a place and how to transcribe them in images. So it’s only a small portion of the story of that lake, it’s my story I guess.

AD: It’s a great story and I feel that those “documentary” projects with a personal and fine art approach show new details and point of views to the viewer.

TSC: I agree. I really appreciate the small side step an artist can bring to documenting something.

AD: What are you working on now? Any new ideas or directions you're being drawn to?

TSC: I’m drawn to still life these days. It’s the « still » part that I like. Usually the only thing moving in the frame is the light. It gets quite subtle.

I always loved domestic spaces. Actually it’s always been about people in places. People in their homes, people in their town, people on earth.

AD: I can’t wait to see these images!