Sunday afternoon in Marseillette /Minervois...

When I took this picture in August 2013, I could not imagine that these majestic trees would disappear so soon. A fungus disease called 'the coloured tree cancer' has infected over these last years a greater part of the plane trees along the Canal du Midi. With no cure available they had to be cut swiftly in the hope to be able to save the remaining healthy ones.

These last 8 years I have photographed this process, unknowingly at first how quickly the landscape would change because of this. I mainly concentrated this photo project geographically between Carcassonne and Narbonne, where the disease hit the hardest, taking pictures over all seasons.

I want to publish these changes in a photo book:  since 2015 I am concentrating on  the planting of the replacement trees. In 2021 I will end this project hoping to have gathered enough material for a historical context of the matter.

Cutting the sick trees along the canal in 2014 near  Roubia

But there is hope that the disease will be stopped.... and replanting is ongoing

new

plantation

at Roubia

(june 16)

2014 -It's very clear that the trees on the front right side have died off... Between Le Somail and Ventenac

...there lies just one year between this photo and the previous one. Both shot in the autumn of 2015...

August 2017

New trees are planted and the greens are returning along the canalside....

This will be the end of the beautiful plane tree at the well visited diner in Le Somail. After the season this once so mighty, lush giant will be brought down too.... (August 2016)

one year later  (april 2017)

and sometimes it even snows.....