Eric Poitevin was born in 1961 in Longuyon (France), lives and works in Mangiennes. Resident of the Villa Médicis in 1989-1990.

Whether he focuses on the faces of World War I veterans (1985), dead deer (1995), skulls and butterflies (1994), undergrowth (1995), horse hindquarters (1999-2000), or fragments of human bodies (2001), Eric Poitevin’s photographs are the result of progressive decision-making. Sometimes requiring months of waiting for the subject of the photograph to be constituted as he wishes, he then meticulously constructs his image. The light, sometimes natural, is often the subject of real work. This is the case for the series of skulls or animals presented on a black background. A way to isolate them completely and to stop them. The frame – he chooses his wood, makes it and assembles it – and the framing, which despite the off-camera does not allow any extrapolation, any escape, are for him perhaps the same thing. “The frame is a way of highlighting the photographic framing, it is a setting, a protection, a border, a staging”. Light, format, paper and framing must thus respond to the density and fragility of each subject represented.

Eric Poitevin photographs beings or places that are in danger of disappearing because they carry a load of time and experience that is about to dissipate. In his work, everything remains in suspense and what certainly holds our attention is this absence of a definite temporality, this invitation to reflect.