Lucie & Simon – Silent World
In the Silent World project, we wanted to study and transform our world’s most symbolic metropolises into imaginary, fictional, impossible places. In our work, we always try to study and put into image the frontier between reality and the world of dreams. Our desire was to put the viewers into a puzzling and uncomfortable place, pushing him to put into question notions of time and space, but mostly our role and position towards the becoming of our world.
Cour carrée du Louvre, C-print, 200x256cm, 2010
From a technical point of view, we wanted to do a project mixing two periods of History of Photography. The beginning of Photography’s techniques in the 19th century by realizing a single very long exposure image of several hours. This way all elements in movement (cars, persons, etc) disappear. We developed a black filter for our camera, which is usually used in Astronomy for analyzing stars and space and which doesn’t allow the camera to receive enough light, therefore needs several hours to record one image.
From their on, we do “classical” images of a fraction of a second, and start working on the computer for several days mixing all these details so that the final image looks like a instant, an frozen moment stolen from an imaginary world.
Angel of the waters fountain, C-print, 200x256cm, 2010
Madison square, C-print, 200x256cm, 2009
Tian’anmen square, C-print, 200x256cm, 2010
Columbus circle, C-print, 250x320cm, 2009
Beijing ring roads, C-print, 200x256cm, 2010
Times square, C-print, 250x320cm, 2010
Place de l’Opera, C-print, 250x320cm, 2009
More images and other interesting projects on Lucie and Simon’s website. They were previously featured on Oitzarisme.ro with the wonderful Scenes of Life project.