Tosani. Reflection and transfixion

Patrick Tosani has spent forty years exploring the possibilities opened up by photography. In Paris, he first studied architecture while at the same time working on his photographic technique as of 1974, focusing on questions of space and scale. He broke onto the scene in the 1980s with a work combining the heritage of the avant-garde 70s and a proclamation of photography as a means of experimentation. Patrick Tosani has taught at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris since 2004.
With the spoon series in 1988, the artist creates a new perspective on the resources used by Monet for the Water Lilies at the Orangerie from the point of view of an analysis of a motif transformed into a microcosm and with an emphasis on scale rather than immersion. Tosani blazes a unique trail that questions reality, transforming it into a physical experience.
By isolating the objects, everyday spoons, captured naturally, become a new object metamorphosed by the light and enlargement: “It is about extracting from reality the small amount of information necessary and sufficient to its sensory perception. The faithfulness and precision of the photographic recording require a certain selectiveness. Not everything can be shown at the risk of clouding the perception. I take a step back with regard to a general representation of the world in order to limit all types of references. I focus my gaze not on ignoring reality but, on the contrary, analysing it, setting landmarks based on its infinite density. This selection has become the reason behind my work. It precedes the photographic recording. It becomes a metaphor of this specific characteristic of photography that is composition, that of isolating things.”
Patrick Tosani, 1997