“Border Line” attempts to evoke the dramas linked to migrations in the style of a contemporary opera. All these images are shot with a large format camera, they could have been made by a nineteenth century photographer (these ghosts do not come out of Photoshop) while the large format prints and their appearance reference romantic painting.
In “Cheap Land”, I explore the proximity of the Banal and the Sublime in these snowy landscapes modified by human activity. These almost vertical landscapes are at the same time an opportunity to think about perspective in the history of painting and photography.
Stylized, the landscape of the “Island of the Gods” takes on a metaphysical tone, to evoke Antiquity and the early days of the World.
It is the proximity of the Sacred and the Profane which is the mainspring of "Lungta". I try to take a look at this distant civilisation in a way that borrows from Alexandra David-Neel and vintage photography as much as from the “clear line” of Herge’s “Tintin in Tibet”.
Artist's Statement
I like to talk about the desire for Elsewhere by questioning the notion of the Sublime.
Awareness of the climate emergency as much as the recent pandemic has led me to reconsider this desire to be elsewhere. Desire as much as terror of an impossible journey to the ends of the earth. “All paths are circular and the journey undertaken only ever leads to oneself.” writes Ibn Arabi. It seems to me that the notion of space is at the center of my work, through travel, migration, landscape or the evocation of space conquest.
It is also spiritual research and questioning about science that influence my work. I was a mechanic before studying philosophy. This dual training leads me to question the paradigm of technological progress; as much as on transcendence and the sacred through the practice of Tibetan Buddhism.
I mainly photograph with a large format camera, in a frontal approach borrowing from the Düsseldorf school as much as from romantic painting. I want the viewer, confronted with the large format, to feel the same vertigo as me.
I am fascinated by the proximity of the Banal and the Sublime. Kant says that the Sublime is “pleasure mingled with dread”. This almost mystical feeling rarely leaves me. I think that the contemplation of an artistic work or shooting, are activities close to meditation.