Underworld, a photographic series and a perfume

I unconsciously started the Underworld photo series by taking pictures in the Barcelona metro.

Living between Paris and Barcelona, I attended a few weeks later a storytelling workshop in the Catalan capital. That's when I first heard about Plato's “Allegory of the Cave”. This text completely echoed the first photos taken in the metro and especially my state of mind at the time.

This text opened my eyes and brought the words I was missing about the "reality" I was living and which was perhaps nothing more than simple shadows reflected on the dark walls of my cave. Getting closer to reality means taking the risk of getting out of your comfort zone and thus seeing things from a different perspective.

The series of photos is accompanied by a perfume that I also created. It is the evocation of the cave, the humidity, the wet stones, the earth, the mold, but also the hot rays of the blinding sun.

This fragrance was presented to a jury of four perfumers* during the final exam of the perfume training I attended the last eight months.

Is this the beginning of a more personal way of creating and sharing my stories, from both a visual and an olfactory perspective? Only time will tell, but it’s definitely an approach I want to explore further now that I’ve successfully passed the olfactory designer exam.

* Jean-Michel Duriez, Aliénor Massenet, Sylvaine Delacourte and Pamela Roberts, former creative director at L'Artisan Parfumeur.