Chimères du futur (Chimeras of the future)
In ancient times, chimeras seemed to arise from an unlikely union between incompatible species. The monster with a lion’s head and a serpent’s tail, but also, by extension, the sphinx and the centaur, were seen as a kind of aberration of nature, which, due to their exceptional shape, opened the doors to mythology and the magical world.
In the Anthropocene era, where reason has triumphed and the divorce from nature is complete, these archaic figures are reappearing. This time, it is the fusion of man and machine that is celebrated in the narratives of techno-science and transhumanism, greeted with bursts of hope, fantasy, or fear.
As a photographer who has devoted much of my career to portraiture, I enjoyed imagining what these “augmented” women and men might look like. In order to fully experience the creative process, I wanted to photograph them in their final form, without using Photoshop. So I used an optical process which, through a patiently measured interplay of light and perspective, would give birth to these hybrids directly in the viewfinder of my Hasselblad. I set up two simultaneous sets in my studio, one featuring a sculpture of my own design, each time different, and the other featuring the model. The actor or actress could see the prosthesis and draw inspiration from it for their gestures and expressions, while as the director, I was caught up in the illusion, fascinated by the creature that appeared before my eyes. “I photographed what I saw,” says Helmut Newton in one of his latest books, troubled by the advent of digital technology. That’s what I did during these sessions, anxious to capture a glimpse of humanity in the gaze of these technological chimeras promised to immortality.
https://www.chambrenoire.com/index.php?album=herve-bruhat/portraits
