Perhaps it’s because I was born the same day as André Breton that I feel so attached to surrealism. Crystal dream!
One day, embarking on an inner journey, I dived into my archives. There, among the unfinished projects and preparative shots, I detected the ironical echo of my most disturbing states of mind.
Moments of wandering in the extreme corners of my psyche: exalted monologues, unfathomable unease, wild imagination, electric acceleration, the fantasy of disappearing.
Like precious mirror-objects and the trace of journeys within the confines of my psyche, images emerged – clear, distinct, and strong.
In the process, I explored photography itself, the sublime window to the unconscious. Anxiety and euphoria morphing into a series of photos, reflecting the undulations of thought. Between calm and chaos. Symbols surfacing to let us see ourselves.
It starts as a form of hypnosis, the gesture of pressing the shutter button not quite in sync with the (often unconscious) mental trace connected to the photo. And in an emotional shift, reality becomes fiction. Like a mysterious, yet familiar language, photography transfers, transforms, interprets.
Through these images, the mystifying but universal snake of madness appears as a totem to contemplate without fear and even with tenderness.
This series’ prints are illuminated by a slight blue tone representing the inner journey, and a touch of purple to inspire spiritual reflection on this strange region of the soul. They are presented in a tulipwood box slit with a scar symbol that lets the light pass through.
15 photos and a poem in a tulipwood box
Buttercup yellow case and midnight blue wool broadcloth bag
Fine art inkjet prints on Hahnemühle Metallic paper developed by the photographer
Successive blue and purple illuminations
Poem printed on Japanese Kozo Thin Natural paper
Limited edition of 10 and 2 artist’s proofs
Fluid, invasive, irrepressible
Sine wave to obscure solitude
Red hot exaltation, acid fog
The other, like a mirage, elusive
Plunged into a parallel world of mirrored landscapes
Consuming, quixotic, azure journeys
Self-presence, self-evaporation
On the horizon, metallic comfort
Flower-thin skin
Lacerated by a tear
Tattooed in translucent ink
Nowhere to go
Roaming ghost-like in the sparkle of nature
Seeking light among the filament branches
And the echoes of electrical synapses
Pellets of ice suspended in the chasm of the head
See snow in summer, spume in the clouds
Surrender, immensely small
In a marshmallow spacetime
Hoping for a leap into otherness
Filled by a miraculous void containing a thousand promises
Infinite blue inside, soothing light
Nestled in the violet rays
Escaped from the rainbow’s grasp