Relief

To date, around 25,000 lichen species have been described worldwide. Living in symbiotic communities, some of them reach ages of up to 4,500 years, making them among the oldest organisms on earth. Yet they are increasingly threatened by extinction. In recent decades, up to a third of these species have disappeared, along with the ecosystems they sustain.

Relief responds to this loss by drawing attention to the fragile presence of lichens. These formations testify to interconnectedness and resilience, while their disappearance signals a deeper erosion of ecological relations. Through photography, their subtle structures are not merely documented but made perceptible as aesthetic phenomena, traces of more than human worlds that surround us yet often remain unseen in everyday life.