CORPUS

When I realized I could be a photographer, I was saved. I knew I had a life raft to cling to. Photography had the power to pull me out of isolation, to build a bridge to others. It gave me a reason to be in the world, to exist. I now had a role to play.

I’ve often used my camera as a passport to gain access to worlds where a photographer wouldn’t be welcome. That’s why I use such a strange wooden camera. It intrigues people. It’s easier to answer the question “What is that machine?” than “What are you doing here?” And then the process is so slow. So I have time to get to know the people I’m photographing. It’s not about a snapshot to be taken at the decisive moment, but much more like a theatrical performance we have to put on together : the amateur actor I meet in the field, and me, the director with my wooden camera.

I wanted to show bodies. Bodies that are out of the norm. By looking at other people’s bodies, I was also challenging certain beauty standards : I like photos that have something a little offbeat about them. You have to take a small step aside and show the beauty of bodies that aren’t standardized. And I also wanted to focus on those who alter their bodies—sculpting them, adding to them, taking away, playing with them.

My goal is to “celebrate the body of the individual in all its specificity, more with sensuality and innocence, than as an object of shame” (dixit Ruth Kaplan in Bathers).

I’ve called this serie I’m currently working on CORPUS, but actually, FLESH might be a better title.

It started with saunas series I started in Genève. Then I developed a taste for seeing and showing the sweat beading on people’s skin—their muscles, tendons, and bodily fluids. And the technical and physical challenges (I sweated a lot) of taking those pictures also attracted me.

I went to watch bodybuilding competitions. It’s very strict and codified; for example, it’s mandatory to get a tan (a kind of brown paint that the athletes must be covered in). The athletes view their bodies as works of art, and they have the power to sculpt them at will.

Cosmetic surgery operating rooms made me see the body as a pure object. I saw the surgeons as carpenters/mechanics, and their patients as planks to be planed.

I'm drawing a line between a bodybuilding competition in La Ciotat, a fetish party in a Berlin basement, and the horse race jockey locker rooms in Istanbul.

It’s hard to explain, but it makes sense to me.

In any case, when I show these pictures to my friends and their reaction is, “What on earth were you doing there?!”, I know I wasn’t wrong.

Ps : this serie is still ongoing. I’d like to take pictures of people having sex, of an embalmer, of somebody giving birth, of wrestler, fakir, toreadors, and a sumotori. I'm open to suggestions, and looking for model, so don't hesitate to drop me a line.