Tête à tête with Michael Flomen

I remember that the first time I went to his studio was like stepping through the door of a fairy tale. Sixteen years have passed since then, yet this moment has remained imprinted in my memory. I can see myself walking, passing like Alice to the other side of the looking-glass, among his half-covered works, piles of negatives, tools whose usage escaped me. Microscopes, bits of organic matter, vats, and magic potions: everything seemed chaotic and meticulously organized all at once, waiting for a revelation.

This is the space in which Michael Flomen takes a radical approach to photography, exploring the possibilities of the photogram, an image created through a camera-less process, without using lenses or focusing, by placing objects directly on a photosensitive surface and exposing it to light. Phenomena invisible to the naked eye (flows, vibrations, minute memories) are inscribed in the material. In a world saturated by pixels, Flomen brings us back to a fundamental definition of his medium: not to represent objects but to receive presences. The photogram is an art of the interstice, an inframince language—in the Duchampian sense—that traces pathways among nature’s kingdoms and makes perceptible that which is usually beyond our reach.