The One-Eared Wolf

Title: The One-Eared Wolf
Original title: OREILLE COUPÉE
Author: Julien Coquentin
ISBN: 9782492920066
Bookseller: Lamaindonne
Year: 2023

The One-Eared Wolf, a 2023 book by French photographer Julien Coquentin, explores the return of the wolf, the relationship between wolves and humans, and the conflict it has provoked.

To understand this book, it is best to hold a physical copy and turn its pages. The photobook contains extensive passages in French and is at once photographic, sociological, political, and literary. It argues neither for nor against the wolf, but offers a poetic, inquisitive, and candid observation of the complex relationship between humans and animals, opening onto broader questions about life, the planet, and the bonds among species.

A range of images alternates across three different papers, including cyanotype prints of captivating beauty. The photographer does not pursue the wolf; he waits for it to come, hoping for the privilege of witnessing its appearance.

The work is built around images made in Aubrac, where wolves were officially recorded as returning in 2015, together with Julien Coquentin’s writing, interviews with those involved on all sides, and excerpts from archival documents. Varied and richly layered, the book offers no final answer, but provides valuable material for reflection.

“In the silence of the archives, I imagined the ghost of that she-wolf: a wandering animal soul, guided by the wild hope that one day she might see her kin again,” writes Julien Coquentin.

That soul may belong to a mythical she-wolf, one ear severed, roaming the woods and thickets, moving through a kingdom without subjects and passing in and out of children’s dreams.

Then we come upon woods veiled in a faint mist, pierced by a narrow shaft of light;

deep in the valley, frost runs riot, and winter has reached the threshold of the mountains.

Stone walls trace the boundaries of small plots, and the trees have been carefully pruned.

Autumn has turned the leaves red.

Some people stand before the camera. They have lived here so long that they are no longer part of the landscape; they are the landscape itself.

Night falls…

It is time to count the sheep. Perhaps some are missing—taken by the wolf.

A shepherd waits with inexhaustible patience while his sheep graze in the warmth of summer.

The book unfolds along several paths. Its initial subject is the wolf and our relationship with it, but beneath this lies a much larger question: the relationship between humanity and nature.

Among the archival texts are reports documenting the pursuit and slaughter of wolves. In the nineteenth century, rabies swept through the countryside, and attacks by diseased wolves were not uncommon. Wolves came to be widely regarded as dangerous and marked for extermination. What took place was a genuine war: bounties were paid for wolf carcasses, traps were set everywhere, and so on.

Whether that war was justified is not the point. Humanity ultimately won, and the wolf disappeared from France.

Yet the animal cannot be confined to a limited territory; borders mean nothing to it. And so it has reclaimed our forests, mountains, and marginal lands. Over the course of a century, however, we grew accustomed to having these places to ourselves. We developed large-scale agriculture, divided up the land, and occupied it. Conflict was inevitable. Wolves see livestock as a ready supply of food; livestock farmers see wolves as the enemy.

There is something irreconcilable in each side’s position: the wolf obeys its instincts, while farmers are protecting animals that mean more to them than livestock destined for slaughter. So what can be done? Hunt and kill the wolf? Control its population? Accept predation?

The people interviewed by Julien Coquentin each offer their own views and proposals, responding according to their sensibilities and experience. Some speak of coexistence and symbiosis; others of struggle and threat. Meanwhile, the wolf slips through the images of The One-Eared Wolf, secretive and unseen. We suddenly imagine it behind a tree in a forest deep with snow. It is everywhere and nowhere to be found—invisible, uncertain, mysterious.

Yet this book cannot be viewed simply as an account of the relationship between wolves and humans. Their ancient confrontation raises a broader and infinitely more complex question: our connection to life itself. Our species is only one among many, and we have survived chiefly because of our intelligence, not merely our physical abilities.

For thousands of years, however, we had to contend with both our environment and its dangers. We were potential prey for many predators, and our survival was deeply precarious.

Yet as we read the book’s texts, look at its images, and step back to reflect, it seems that we have forgotten this dimension of our existence. Our scientific knowledge has led us to disregard life’s predatory potential, especially since we exterminated certain species—wolves, bears, lynx, and others.

There is no value judgment here. But Julien Coquentin’s book indirectly reveals that the wolf’s return also forces humanity to confront something it had forgotten.

That confrontation raises two questions: What do we do with the nature around us? And how do we live alongside it?

Until now, we have bent nature to our will and reshaped it—France is effectively one vast cultivated garden, where wilderness in the strict sense no longer exists. But we are beginning to encounter the limits of those choices. Reversing them is just as complex—we cannot undo two centuries of economic decisions overnight—and just as painful: there is real anguish in seeing a lamb or ewe die after delivering it with your own hands and caring for it. Any solution will probably require compromise and change. Both will take time, and neither will be easy.

Protecting life may well be one of the defining challenges of the twenty-first century, because the survival of our own species depends on it.

With remarkable subtlety and understated grace, The One-Eared Wolf helps us recognize not only the path ahead, but also its complexity. There will never be an absolute answer, never a simple insistence that “we must do this” or “we must do that.” Everything comes down to compromise and discussion—and, above all, to appreciating and protecting beauty.

Julien Coquentin follows the tracks of a mysterious she-wolf, and we follow in the photographer’s footsteps. Perhaps, on a night under the full moon, we might hear the packs calling to that one-eared she-wolf who has haunted these lands for more than a century.

Who knows? Perhaps one day we will live together rather than remain opposed.

Note: The images are reproduced from the photobook. Some passages have been translated and excerpted from articles published online. All rights belong to the original authors.

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