Text by John Berger, Daniel Pennac
Photographs by Liberto Macarro
Animals are everywhere in ancient rock art, which represented them without limits and no borders. They merge with the earth and the sky. The photography of Liberto Macarro presents the same worldview. One nature: landscape, animals, and men all closely intertwined. Macarro, a French photographer who lives in the mountainous region of Savoie, has photographed cows and other large mammals such as camels and elephants in the Alps, Spain, India, and Tibet. His photographs are generally close ups of the animals, often concentrating on their hide or another specific part of the animal and the surrounding landscape–the two blending together almost seamlessly.
As says the famous writer Daniel Pennac, “Until now, as soon as I left the city for heights, I thought I saw cows in the landscape. But Liberto Macarro revealed to me the obvious: the cows are the scenery alone in quiet majesty. Back line or ridgeline, valleys of backbones and foothills of muscles, joints as cut tops… Under the eye of Macarro cows become the embodiment of the mountains, a landscape in the flesh, in horn, in curves, in silence and reflection… Yes, the cow, the smallest of our big mammals, requires consideration: this is exactly what gives him the patient eye of Liberto Macarro. “
