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Out of Bounds #1 – Florent Philippe

The premier issue of our new photo-art magazine: ‘OUT OF BOUNDS’

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Florent Philippe

the story of a man returning to his homeland after 30 years of absence

This series tells the story of a man who returns to his homeland after a 30-year absence. One cannot exist without the other.

He finds the places where, as a child, he would hide from the world he did not understand. 

Once he dreamed of a more suitable place. Yet today he rediscovers all the means to escape again. He uses utopian, absurd and poetic means. Overwhelmed with sensitivity, he now has the structure and the language to enjoy this tragicomic situation. Finally, he returns to the view of all that emptiness which he couldn’t face before, the gap between the visible and the real.

I use derision and dreams to deal with sometimes difficult subjects. I am the one who hides and watches himself. So behind a poetic image often hides an introspection, a tear treated with humor and derision.

Each series requires months of preparation and location. Travelling to the location is never undertaken until all the plans and details make sense.

Aesthetics for aesthetics sake are evident only around the edges of the sensitive, and vanish very quickly. Subsequently, the places chosen have not only memorial value but symbolic, too.

Very little editing is done, otherwise a lot of the comedic value would be lost. What I want is to bring something to this supermarket of reality. To be more real than the real in order to go beyond it, escape from it and find it wiser, more livable. Setting a ladder in the storm is not easy. 

Today my partner works by my side with tireless assistance and an uncompromising look. ‘The reader’ often yells in the wind and the cold.

These photos should be seen as a dialogue between time and space. A novel between this researcher, who may or may not be me. This man who maybe you.

Florent P.

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