“I still have this urge to start all over again… naked under new stars”
DARK MATTERs
serves as an umbrella term for my night photography, a recent body of work that investigates notions of time and space while reminding us that 95% of the universe remains unknown Dark Matter.
DARK MATTERs applies in particular to Incertitudes a new series of large format silver gelatin prints. These silvery firmaments cross the line between the reality of the physical world and the invisible magic part of our universe. Years of experimentation allowed me to install special cameras at the open sea, calibrated to only capture the dark light of cosmic radiation. This ancient light of dead stars still travels towards us but beyond the visible spectrum. A single print of Incertitudes features up 1.2 million individual silver crystals the viewer may identify with his naked eyes; counting them however becomes impossible for the human gaze. Pushed towards the edge of quantum physics, photochemistry finally reveals it’s potential to give a modest taste of infinity.
DARK MATTERs also includes the early lightening series Electric Cinema (2008 – 2012) followed by the moonlight series Nocturnes and the planetary phenomena of Eclipse (since 2011). These series already focus on rare natural phenomena on the open sea, a magic of detail invisible to the naked eye. Gravity Fields (2017) is one of my recent accidental discoveries capturing the nocturnal effects of three chaotic systems: water, light and gravity. Capturing chaos, the camera becomes a master tool, transforming the unpredictable into human nutrition for the eye.
The series Tides- Entre Loup et Chien (since 2011) are both outcome of these nocturnal accidents between dusk and dawn. The title refers to a French synonym for low light situations when you can not tell the difference between moon- and daylight, hence a wolf and a dog. Nightscapes finally reflects the metropolitan accident, an urban expression of Nocturnes. When heavy rain hits the city its artificial light transforms and expands, mirroring the long gone beauty of nature we banned (work in progress since 2012).
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