Looking at the Headwaters with Virginie Drujon-Kippelen

Drujon-Kippelen planespotting on the banks of the Flint River off Forest Parkway.

I spend a lot of time taking photos of the Flint headwaters that prove they are beautiful, inviting, alive, and full of potential—all in an effort to contradict the decades-old narrative that the river is a nuisance to be contained, a dumping grounds. Currently, the Flint River in the airport area is all of those things simultaneously, and that’s part of what makes it exciting to “Find the Flint.” Sometimes I dream about the headwaters, sometimes they give me nightmares.

This complex appreciation is what I love about Virginie Drujon-Kippelen’s ongoing series of headwaters portraits and landscapes. Virginie is an accomplished fine art photographer who has been following and documenting our work with Finding the Flint for a couple years. Her photos grapple with the sometimes sinister, sometimes trancendent beauty of the headwaters, ultimately “challenging the constructed notion of beauty,” and the way we value urban wildness.

See more of Virginie’s Lost in Sight project on Atlanta Celebrates Photography.