Thomas Paquet

Born in 1979 in Troyes. Lives and works in Paris. «For several years now, as part of a game of construction to paint a sensitive experience of the world, I have been working on a photographic study based on its fundamental characteristics: light, space and time. Experimentation is central here, and an optical, physical or chemical device is developed for each of my projects. The works produced, somewhere between premeditation and chance, take on a plastic dimension that works from the inside out on the possibilities and limits of the photographic document. My work is also a hymn to slowness. The exposure times I use for my projects are very long, sometimes ranging from a few minutes to several days of exposure. I see photography as an art form whose medium cannot be ignored, which is why film is often at the heart of my creative process. I often use traditional silver techniques, such as wet collodion prints and cyanotypes. Day after day, renewed through the eyes, my gestures are extended onto the photographic emulsion. My approach is based on craftsmanship, working with materials, and using traditional processes to confound our relationship with the passage of time. By blurring the boundaries between science and poetry, materiality and abstraction, objectivity and subjectivity, my works are an invitation to go beyond our representation of reality. The photographic emulsion then reveals an image that deceives our beliefs, moving from the immaterial to a tangible, physical proof».