Alexis Pichot's Marche Celeste Photography Series

There is something magical about the nocturnal world set within the confines of a forest. The moon, the shadows, the elegant outline of trees; all deep-rooted symbolism of the in-between world. A world so ancient, so mystical and so long forgotten we can only reconnect to it in fables and through film. It is a world so very different from the one we inhabit in our busy day to day lives. The in-between world has fascinated us as a collective since the dawn of time. Eerie and yet deeply spiritual at the same time, the nocturnal world is a mystery. It has the capacity to haunt and scare us and yet at the other end of the spectrum it heightens our senses so we are in awe. A form of spiritual awe. In awe of the light, the shadows, the silvery forms as they glisten under the white bright moon. No one has captured these feelings more succinctly, more powerfully, than Alexis Pichot in his photographic series, Marche Celeste.

“The forest appeared to me as the possible source of an ancient dormant life, a place of evident physical and spiritual regeneration. I became aware of the heavy weight of our cultural past: it is rare to find a nocturnal scene in the forest that is not distressing, even threatening. During these rambles, there was a growing connection with the forest and the desire to account for my perceptions of it,” said Pichot.

Pichot is a true romantic. The images he captures are the sonnets that poets would have written if they stood beside him. The electric surge he feels pulsing through him as he focuses his photographic lens is the same reawakening we feel as we immerse into his transcendental photographic dream.

“This mystical experience based on my direct encounter with the Elements awakened another connection, the one with the deepest of my being. The forest is one of the strongest incarnations of nature at its origins and a place of transition as well, a means to another state, for the one who is immersed,” said Pichot.

The moon and her cycles are a powerful, hypnotising symbol for Pichot. But so too are other natural elements, rocks, trees, water and forest clearings. He plays with the images that appear in front of him, imagining wild ideas and taken by flights of fancy.

“The emblematic rocks of Fontainebleau take on the appearance of meteors coming from another world of light,” he explains.

But that is the gift of one submerged and surrendered to the whims of the in-between world? Shadows play tricks and wood nymphs dart from clearings to thick undergrowth. And one would never know which was which not least of all because the spell has already been cast. Pichot is under it completely. And the viewer of his numinous photographs fall headlong under too.