Where is Damien ?

Inspired by the imaginary worlds of horror and fantasy, Raphaëlle Schotsmans stages her fascination in this series for transgression and the mysteries of the human psyche. Her images oscillate between fetishism and sadomasochism and question, through elaborate and extremely detailed stagings, the threshold of pain that humans can inflict on themselves for pleasure, and that sometimes even leads to death. In a way that is both aesthetic and wild, we’re plunged into the depths of human suffering. That’s how her work incorporates the codes of horror, gore or fantasy cinema and photography, which can be found in films such as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Tobe Hooper, 1974), Hostel (Eli Roth, 2005), Timber Falls (Tony Giglio, 2007), Martyrs (Pascal Laugier, 2008), Eden Lake (James Watkins, 2008) or in the work of the Japanese photographers Izima Kaoru and Nobuyoshi Araki.