Ammonite and Estate Car

The Voyage à Nantes installs things in the street and watches people walk past. Most stop, briefly, then move on. The ammonites were different — fossilised shells the size of lorry wheels, erupting from the paving as if the city had grown them from the inside out.

I'd seen them on a previous visit. This time I brought the Canon AE1, loaded with HP5+, and waited for the moment when the geological and the mundane sat side by side. What makes the photograph is not the fossil. It is the car parked half a metre from it, roof rails and all, with a fresh block of unworked stone balanced on the bonnet like a delivery nobody had signed for.

Two hundred million years and a family hatchback, sharing a kerb, neither giving way. Nantes does this well. It installs the extraordinary and then declines to make a fuss about it.

Shot on Canon AE1 Program, Ilford HP5+ 100 ASA — Nantes, July 2026

Printed at 43,5 × 30 cm through WhiteWall in Berlin. Choose the bare print, acrylic glass, a mounted frame, or a floater frame — what the finishes actually mean.