Mort Profonde is a sort of visual compendium of the poetic universe of Pelléas et Mélisande, a symbolistic drama written at the end of the 19th century by Maurice Maeterlinck and later transposed into music by Claude Debussy. Specifically, creating one of his still metamorphosis, the artist represents his vision of the classic Eros-Thanatos dialectic, combining in a troubling balance a deadly symbol, with its exact opposite.
It should be noted that the title of the work is also a calembour that involves a further level of interpretation; to decode it, it is useful to refer to one of the key concepts conceived by Roland Barthes in 'La Chambre Claire'. According to him, photography is a 'Flat Death', or, to use the precise words of the French semiologist: "Contemporary with the regression of rituals, Photography could perhaps correspond to the irruption, in our modern society, of an asymbolic Death, beyond religion, beyond ritual: a kind of sudden dive into literal Death... With photography, we enter the Flat Death." Pulling in the opposite direction, the artist, through the technique of double exposures, idealistically aims to overcome this flatness in favour of a depth that, although illusory and superficial, can be rich in new aesthetic and conceptual implications.
