Naked Garden! Fabrice Bigot Shoots the Secret Lives of Flowers

At night, in the midst of Melbourne suburbia, French-born photographer Fabrice Bigot discovers his subject matter. He shoots flowers, lit just by streetlamps like breathing organisms. This series – ‘Naked Garden’ is more alien than familiar and more sensuous than pretty. In the embrace of night, Bigot’s botanicals are stripped of colour and left to their essential form.

Flowers – long since an aesthetic delight are given new emphasise under Bigot’s eye. He stalks his subject matter, provoking a darkness that is both unsettling and alluring. His flowers gently lap from centre frame, enshrouded by a veil of black. They sink from light to dark, fold, gather and cluster. Erotic, odd and cinematic, this series is a pleasure to view. Bigot describes these “night flowers” as “standing naked in front of me”. Under a watchful streetlamp and camera lense, Australian florals are revealed as fragile, seductive and daunting.

Bigot takes matter that seems entirely ordinary (your neighbour’s garden) and presents it as unearthly. His big, critically acclaimed photographs fervently treat the pleasant as exotic. One reviewer, Robert Nelson attributed Bigot’s series with “theatrical magic”. It is true – Bigot has extracted a bizarre beauty from a landscape otherwise considered mundane and rationalist.

Throughout March 2016, ‘Naked Gardens’ is exhibiting as part of a group show hosted by Port Jackson Press Gallery and Angela Tandori Fine Art. The collection is available at angelatandorifineart.com/collections/eclipse.