Aside from making great cheese and even better wine, the French are known for their shameless and often clever attempts at redefining modern art. Case in point: Pupsam’s Selfkiss (give it a minute to load – it’s a large Flash file).
Vagabondish is reader-supported. When you buy through links on our site, we may earn a small affiliate commission. Read our disclosure.
Megorious provides us with a translation – albeit a bit choppy – of the French-only website:
The marvelous thing about the photograph, it is that it collects a glance, a gesture, one moment, fugacious reality from where the emotion spouts out. However, which is presented here does not exist, never existed and will never exist. But the technical control makes that one is there, in front of, like a funambulist on his wire, in unstable balance between I believe it and I do not believe it.
These moments were invented by Pupsam. And yet, yes, it is report, because it was necessary to arrive from there a long investigation and great interior voyages:
Starting from an agreeing individual, to imagine together its meeting with itself (not another, not its double) to form a couple which will be embraced, then to track the posture, the spark in the eye, finally the abandonment with the other which is me to give to see the impossible kiss monstrueusement, impudic. Then? moments desired, dreamed, hidden with the bottom of us, denied”¦ taboo! Perhaps fugacious unreality from where the disorder spouts out.
Aside from drooling over the sheer amount of Photoshop hours necessary to achieve this effect, it’s a damn interesting and entirely creepy concept.
Sure, we’ve got cutting edge “art” here in the States (Piss Christ comes to mind), but a lot of the really groundbreaking stuff – the photography, graphic design, etc. – is coming out of Europe.