Pour un monde flou.
Analog photography by Eliott Silhol.
I work exclusively with analog photography, on 35mm film, without editing (no photoshop, no AI).
My work focuses mainly on the human figure — the nude body in motion, the portrait — but also on nature, dancers, architecture, artworks, and abstract forms.
I do not seek the technical perfection of today’s race toward ultra-detailed, edited digital images. I prefer the poetry of film’s imperfections: the unexpected, vibrating textures, and a figurative representation that remains distant from reality. My framing often seeks some degree of abstraction, within an overall figurative approach.
There is no post-production in my practice: I search for poetry found through the gaze, not through retouching work or the cost of a camera. I only shoot with the basic Canon AE-1 with a 50mm f/1.8 lens.
I work with shallow depths of field, merging localised sharp areas within blurred, shifting, almost dreamlike spaces. This use of blur is an aesthetic choice, a way of creating distance from reality to put it in perspective — much like can be done in painting.
At a time when critical thinking and discernment are undermined by propaganda, information bubbles, and when many people are unknowingly manipulated by confirmation bias leading to polarisation and extremism, this choice of blur also carries a political dimension. We must continue to doubt, to listen to perspectives different from our own. This is essential in resisting the unfolding obscurantist forces.
Only doubt is luminous, and doubt is blurry.
Film imposes a certain slowness, a reflective pace. Each image has a cost, a temporality, an intention. You don’t press the shutter twenty times for the same photo — you think, you wait, you choose. This constraint gives each shot a singular value. Here too, poetry and slowness serve as a counterforce to the frantic acceleration of our systems of thought.
My practice is sincere and simple. It will not save the world, but it captures forms of beauty, presence, and nuanced truth — without manipulation.
Drawing and Painting
My main creative activity is in painting, where I am also inspired by the human figure. In this practice, I work exclusively with life models in the ephemeral energy of their presence, depicting it on cavelike, abstract backgrounds to evoke the original bond between humans and the Earth’s mineral placenta.
Please visit my dedicated site for more information: eliottsilhol.com and on Instagram
