French photographer Éric Antoine has devoted much of his practice to historical photographic processes, in particular wet-plate collodion. Having chosen a quiet life in the French countryside, he deliberately focuses his photography on his immediate, familiar surroundings, returning to the same places again and again. Whether photographing trees and the natural world or quiet still lifes, Antoine's images are marked by a sense of quietude and absence. Throughout his work, a concern with the passage of time and an artistic and existential quest for simplicity remain constant.
Working with large-format cameras and early photographic optics, Antoine carries out the entire process himself, from preparing the chemicals and coating the glass plates to developing and framing the resulting ambrotypes. The demanding and unpredictable process produces unique photographic objects on glass with finely detailed, shimmering, silvery surfaces. Far from being an exercise in nostalgia, the wet-plate collodion process allows Antoine to work slowly and deliberately, with its technical constraints shaping the making of each image. In an age of instant image production, taking time becomes a distinctly contemporary choice, offering a counterpoint to what he calls the "digital deluge".
Rather than seeking out ever-changing, distant landscapes, Antoine observes how familiar places transform over time and across the seasons, bearing witness to their evolution and, through it, to the passage of time. "I don't change my subject; my subject changes." This sustained attention is visible in Oliviers, where Antoine focuses on the gnarled trunks, branching structures and weathered surfaces of olive trees, their forms bearing visible traces of time.
Alongside the natural world, Antoine works with still lifes and recurring symbolic forms. In Cerveaux, layers of papers and stacked documents, some drawn from his own family history, form sculptural arrangements that evoke real or imagined lives. A dark sphere recurs as a motif throughout Antoine's work, finding its way into Cerveaux between the layered papers and documents, too. In Useful Lies, however, the sphere becomes large and luminous, taking on a more hopeful meaning: a symbol of optimism maintained in the face of hardship.
Across these series, Antoine's recurring forms and slow photographic process reflect a practice rooted in materiality, time and close observation.