Hollow, 2015
The city seems in the grip of an insurmountable winter. Unless it is him who holds it in thrall; he drifts alone, a stranger to himself. Trapped in the absurdity of being in the world when any horizon looks like a dead end.
Here everything is cold. Plagued by deaf, white apparitions, he wanders in search of an anchor, perhaps redemption in the blinding light, a little warmth. The warmth of another – human tenderness – which always eludes him and turns its back, bringing more anxiety than comfort. The warmth of another who gives herself or refuses, but remains irrevocably a desert island, like a mirror to his loneliness.
His quest could be a failure.
As if, each time he glimpses a way out, he tries to capture the hazy visions into which he seems to stumble – and we who look at his images stumble with him, shaken – and then he loses his way again, in the world and in himself, only to reveal more flashes.
His photographs are vertiginous, they have the beauty of the vanquished returning to the light, they give voice to the loneliness of one who is lost, who feels wretched, but confronts the fear of emptiness and of not being able to exist. Thus they capture as much light as despair and hint that winter is not ultimately insurmountable.
Caroline Bénichou
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