The hills were green and so were we is part of the book Magnolia, a collaboration between photographers Iphygenia Dubois and Lore Horré, realized in 2014. It is the result of a self-chosen isolation in an old monastery, which used to belong to ‘Les Oblats de Marie Immaculée’. Since two years all the oblates were forced to leave their home, some of their personal belongings, though, were left behind. The photographers didn’t start with a concrete idea, but were guided by the prevailing atmosphere of gloom surrounding the empty buildings. They lived in the traces of someone else’s past, in an uncanny environment. The work tells the story of the extant past in the present and its desolate surroundings.