Where beauty has not one face but many In this new series of works from Fabrice Bigot, the artist has moved from his dark and sensual depictions of flowers to the nude female body. His floral photographs dealt in the sexual, the beautiful and in mortality. In this new series human female bodies with evidence of time rather than imagined culturally constructed perfection, acknowledge the inevitability of death but also as lives lived as a unique journey.

In the photographs mature bodies marked with life events, with vicissitudes of life and ageing. Breasts are not the shape they once were, as they fall upon the body. Creases and wrinkles index time and life against a black enveloping space – a space that not only portends the fate of us all – but which also provides comfort and a veiling security. The models, with their averted heads, twist and contort as they are embraced in a deep black. Beauty has not one face, but many.

These are ‘real bodies’, carrying their elastic markings from underwear just removed, to bones, creases and generous bellies. While real bodies the photos are structured, and performed. Lights are established and shadows created. These bodies have colours on the flesh, purples, and greens that result from the lighting. Bigot used a blue coloured gel to accentuate the sculptural aspect of the models, but also to create a kind of twilight/moonlight atmosphere serving to create a sense of intimacy.

The female nude is an over determined genre of photography. It is difficult genre to add anything new or creative to its history. These are not however the female body that normally appears in ‘art nude photography’. These are mature bodies marked with life events, and are testament to a living journey full of stories. The heads of the models are averted; and beauty has more than one face.

– David O’Halloran, Senior Curator at Latrobe Regional Gallery