"Philippe Fichot, born in 1958, is a photographer for more than 40 years. His work is almost always in black & white, described as being, "an exploration of the subconscious of eroticism and of the dark poetry of the human body." An autodidact artist whose work continually seeks to expose the ultimate beauty, Philippe Fichot has mastered the use of light and shade, as well as darkroom manipulation, to an extreme degree.
Each photograph is timeless, like seen through old mirrors, and an esthetic offense bordering on the prohibited. The figures float between life and death in obscure fluids - perhaps drowned, or perhaps sleeping and always exposed to the eye of the voyeur. Eroticism (and sex) are in this case not excuses for exhibitionism, but a reflex of the soul which emerges from obscurity : absolute phantoms whose sensitive image commences to exist...
All these dream visions are projections of the theatre of the spirit. They are put on stage with precision and then reprocessed in the dark room, engendering an unknown, microscopical and abstract reality under the surface of the picture. The ultimate dimension of passing time emerges... petrified beauty, a soiled and diaphanous icon."
