The photographic practice of Baptiste Rabichon, the winner of the 2017 BMW Residency at the Gobelins School of Visual Arts, gives new meaning to the concept of matter engendering content. His work is an assemblage of sensations and impressions. His discourse is constructed through the use of complex tools and protocols of manufacture, combining new and old technologies. These are strange, rare, unique objects—we must call them photographs—in various forms, fragmented visions of the garden of the Hesperides. They result from a specific action on the French photographic scene, an experimentation in which fantasy goes side by side with admiration for august forebears. In this setting, we may sometimes glimpse Fox-Talbot or Renger-Patzsch. They stroll its paths and bestow their advice upon this young gardener, this man-flower.
François Cheval