Jean-Francois Rauzier

A fascinating monograph on the contemporary French photographer who utilizes digital technology to create highly detailed panoramas. This volume collects Rauzier's fantastical photographic compositions, which are comprised of thousands of high-resolution close-up views stitched together to create his own supernatural man-made world.

As a fashion photographer in the 1970s, Rauzier longed to break free from the constraints of advertising and film photography. With his 'hyperphotos' he strove to capture "the panorama and the macro view all at once, to stop time and to have the possibility of viewing all the details of a static image". Rauzier carefully composes each work from elements and images he has collected over many years, working in some ways more like a painter than a photographer. Using digital technology, he cuts, moves and constructs buildings, gardens, animals, and many other objects, carefully collected during long photographic sessions to inspire a new fantastic landscape, a capricious picture or a baroque masterpiece. He strives to transform the world according to his dreams, wishes and anxieties, and to recreate the magic and secrecy of ancient legends and stories using 21st century media.