On My Work: Form, Trace, and Presence

My work is a study of what lingers just beneath the visible—of how we express ourselves when the familiar cues of identity are stripped away. I’m drawn to the tension between what is revealed and what is concealed, and to the subtle ways we leave a mark: a gesture, a shift in posture, the faint outline of something felt but not named.

Working across both analogue and digital formats, I explore recurring themes of anonymity, psychological depth, and transformation. My images often center on bodies that are fragmented, veiled, or in motion, inviting the viewer to slow down and engage with the language of form, trace, and presence.

Each series is a quiet investigation into what it means to be seen—or to choose not to be. In Fabricated, subjects are given only a single piece of fabric and asked to respond without instruction. In Tinfoil Head, identity is obscured to create space for pure movement. Flora Persona blends the body with nature, softening the boundary between self and environment. And in Veni Vestigium, the subject nearly disappears, leaving only the impression—the trace—of who or what was there.

Through it all, I aim not to define identity, but to observe its fluidity. My images are about the spaces between: between person and role, between visibility and disappearance, between what we show and what we feel.

Laurent Philippe: Artist Statement

I am interested in the parts of us that don’t always have language—what flickers beneath the surface, what we try to hold in, what slips through despite us.

My background as a therapist has taught me to listen not only to words, but to silence, gesture, and hesitation—the places where stories live before they’re spoken. That same attentiveness shapes my photography. I work with the body as a site of memory, instinct, and transformation—a space where presence doesn’t always mean clarity, and absence doesn’t mean loss.

Much of my practice is experimental. I often place people in the same minimal conditions—a collar, a piece of fabric, a single constraint—and observe how each person moves, resists, reveals, or performs differently. I’m fascinated by how true selves surface in unexpected ways, and how what’s most honest often happens when we stop trying to be seen a certain way.

I often conceal the face—not to erase identity, but because I’m not interested in that version of it. The face is where we’ve been trained to perform: to mask, to please, to control how we’re perceived. But there is so much more truth in how a body carries itself—in a gesture, a hesitation, a breath held just too long. By turning attention away from the face, I try to move past what’s been rehearsed and into something less polished, more instinctive, more real.

I work in both analogue and digital formats, allowing space for accident and process. The photograph, for me, is not an endpoint—it’s a moment of meeting, an invitation to feel something real without needing to name it.

Ultimately, I’m not trying to capture people as they are. I’m trying to capture something that might be true, just for a second—a quiet honesty, a held breath, a disappearing gesture.

That’s enough.