© Baptiste Rabichon

The work of Baptiste Rabichon explores the frictional encounter between digital image making—which can be endlessly fine-tuned—and the mysteries of the darkroom, where chance has its say.
The evocative titles of the five series to be exhibited in Macao show the very personal nature of his work and his intent to set on paper a feeling at a particular time, at a particular place. His art is a mixture of emotions and impressions, an ensemble that is ever present whatever the subject of his work. Not a conventional photographer Rabichon constantly seeks to take an image to another reality and composes his photographs like a painter. Balconies are composed of a series of layers, perfectly matching his manner of working. In the darkroom Baptiste Rabichon gathers his memories while shaking up our relationship to photography, the photographic paper capturing the gesture of the artist to reveal an image, a new reality.

Mastering sophisticated tools, half of his images are composed by computer. Resin coated photographic paper is his blank canvas, a territory of exploration for his composition process, mixing analog photography, digital images and the projection of diverse objects from his daily life. Then with photosensitive paper, the artist stands against the remaining empty part of the image, in the dark, and exposes it to light. The paper is a third eye that records the final image.
In a rapidly changing world where digital media dominates, Rabichon chooses to re-explore analog photography. An echo of the past when photography replaced painting as a recorder of reality.

Baptiste Rabichon, Album b, 2018, C-print