Ensemble Seul - Éric Antoine

196 Pages
30.8 × 24.8 × 2.6 cm

Ensemble Seul brings together the photographs Éric Antoine crafted over five years, in seclusion. A craftsman of light, he prepares his own chemical emulsions to reveal what is no more, turning his memories into photographic apparitions. He uses the wet collodion process to create his images on glass plates. “I try to make photographs that are enigmatic, that belong to no era, no place.” He chose this old process for its materiality and finesse, and for the time-consuming nature of the approach which, as he notes, helped save his life.

Éric Antoine’s photographs immerse us in a poetic black-and-white world, where objects blend into faces, faces into vegetation, vegetation into touch. All our senses are awakened; we become that wild animal in the forest, ever on the lookout…

Ensemble Seul captures the power and luminosity of ambrotypes’ tinted silvers, and admirably respects the spirit of Éric Antoine’s body of work—like an extension of his practice.