For the past 30 years, Noelle Hoeppe has been producing a radical body of photographs. She met her muse in New York in the 1980s, developing erotic, choreographed rituals, sort of dancing and racing in black-and-white which led her to a more fundamental exploration of the body and the organic. Beginning in this period, she explored femininity (as in Blues Nudes), comparing it to the mysterious, ghostly presence of a man’s body (RX One). Meticulously put together, Hoeppe’s large-format photographs are like sculptures that make photography into a medium as primitive as it is sophisticated. The evolution of her work is disturbing and traumatic for the viewer, as in Blood, which turns into an organic world—never before have we seen such a precise depiction of membranes, moods and palpitations. Hoeppe’s close-ups of literally unnameable scenes take viewers out of their depth. Fluids is like a journey to the center of the body, not abstract but indescribable. Nothing, except for perhaps astronomical photography, has produced this kind of picture. In fact, Hoeppe’s latest series, X 23, features photographs of space, going beyond shapes.
Michel Poivert
