"Questioning the nature of absence, the flight of time and the fragility of human beings, Eric ANTOINE’s work embodies our most intimate feelings. Unlike the photographer always seeking exotic snapshots, he shows the importance of self reflection through timeless photographs taken within the limits of his personal environment. He pays homage to simplicity and presents us with enigmas of precious silvery photography.
In this exhibition, images serve as relics of an undefined period in time. A very personal story, born from a need for some sort of homecoming, is told throughout scenes mixing nature and solitary individuals.
For the last few years, Eric Antoine has concentrated his work on the 19th century wet collodion process in which every step is in the control of the photographer. From preparing the chemicals until the last touch of varnish he composes with the multiple constraints that such a capricious technique imposes. It is all a very special alchemy where the process itself strengthens the feeling of absence and calmness. These images on glass, light or dark, fragile results of a methodical practice, strongly counter the contemporary «digital flood» that Eric ANTOINE refutes.
However precise this process is, within the limits of his control, the photographer can let visual accidents intervene in the image.
An organic force is conferred to these photographs, now objects, and there are as many spectral and hazy presences visible as there are detailed features of figures immersed in their bucolic realm."