Christophe Rihet

Road to Death

Maison des peintres

Closed on 24 September 2017

Speed and acceleration are at the heart of the modernization process sweeping us up in a race involving every facet of daily life. Modern life is based on constant risk. Accidents are its essence. Crashes bring grief and misery, but can no longer be interpreted only as brutally tearing the victims from life, like ancient natural cataclysms that arbitrarily struck and devastated populations. It is a part of existence from the moment life begins. Sometimes accidental death seems like a natural culmination of modern life, making the celebrities in this album the tragic heroes of our times. Their lives were the flower but their deaths may have been the fruit. Christophe Rihet found the places where they died. He photographed their invisible graves, and by the frame offered to the revealed image, here he transforms their brief false move into a move into eternity. He shows us the road in a different guise, as an open-air mausoleum.
Camille Riquier

Publication: Road to Death, éditions 213, 2017.
Prints by Janvier, Paris.
Framing by Atelier Demi-Teinte, Paris.