Any rupture marks the inception of a duality. This rupture, paradoxically understood as a fundamental phenomenon of life, is the foundation of Arnaud’s work as well as a constant in his own journey. Born in France, with his teenage years spent in Egypt, he learned to approach his surroundings from a dual perspective.

Photography has been his chief means of expression since a very young age. His work is rooted in observation and attention, a way of looking at things that puts up a mirror to the world in all its plurality, as if the objects were looking back at him. His eyes uncover recollections, lingering images, a sort of residual retinal imprint. He finds balance in sets of seemingly incongruous forms, order in randomness, patterns in both nature and the city. His attraction to mega-cities and their entropic development (self-built structures, for instance), as well as indeterminacy—that which has yet to be decided or defined—contrasts with his training as an architect.

Arnaud currently divides his time between Mexico City, Cairo, and the French countryside, where he observes nature from close up and finds order in the apparent disorder of organic growth, in movement and the mutable. He sees beauty in the complexity intrinsic to nature, including our own human nature.

Delphine Passot.