Pascal Gauchet
‘I have been manipulating photons for the last 30 years with a particular emphasis on holographic imagery and stereo photography.’
Pascal Gauchet’s first artworks with light were black and white photographs. With these images he explored textures, shadows and shades of grey, often within the urban environment. The use of a wide angle lens and of compositions depicting strong perspectives point were employed with the intent to construct an immersive scene reflecting the natural field of vision. His encounter with holography presented a medium to explore this intent. The photographic constraint that ties the subject matter to the “cyclopean point of view” of the photographer, disappears. The hologram becomes a window, through which the image “floats”, aerial and transparent, leaving the viewer to decide their own points of view. A new universe opens up, a new relationship with imagery.
Through holography he first explored ‘light’, in a process which focuses on physical colors and its iridescent hue. In these works the volumetric aspect of holography is often being given secondary importance. His recent construction of a system for synthesizing multiple photographic points of view into one single holographic image enables him to go back to photography. A succession of discrete windows are distributed in space giving multitudes of points of view. Combined they create a single window of extended geometrical perspective.
Art holograms by Pascal Gauchet are in the collections of MIT Museum, French Photography Museum, ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe as well as private collectors. Exhibitions of his artwork have included ‘Arts and New Technologies’ in Quebec, at Arco in Madrid, at the National Centre for Arts and Technologies in France and recently at the Arts Museum in Toulon and the Lanterna Magica in Switzerland.
Founder of Atelier Holographique in Paris, Pascal Gauchet has been commissioned to make holograms for Cartier, Christian de Portzamparc, Van Cleef & Harpels, Peugeot and other clients. Gauchet studied creative photography at Nottingham Polytechnic, UK and has received awards from the Shearwater Foundation (New York), the Anthony Foundation (Houston) and the Hologram Foundation (Paris).