These images were born from a self-imposed constraint: not to use any form of digital manipulation. This is not a rejection of technology; rather, our intention is to experience something unsettling and ecstatic that a computer cannot reproduce. After composing the scene, shaping the light as well as the shadow, and painting the backgrounds, there comes a moment in the studio when the three-dimensional scene before our eyes becomes a two-dimensional painting.

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At that moment, a perceptual shock occurs. We stand still. The eye is deceived; the brain can no longer “decide” what it is seeing. We called this suspended moment “the undecidable moment.” Putting into words what we feel at that instant is as difficult as describing what it might feel like to pass your hand through a painting... A breach opens in reality, drawing us into a strange experience that almost takes on the quality of a supernatural apparition.

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It is at this precise moment that the photographic act takes place: we release the shutter. The photograph becomes a record, a memory of that instant. Printed, framed and presented in an exhibition setting, the image seen by the public is intended as a window onto this “breach” in reality. In a way, we hand the experience over to the viewer and allow them to decide what they are looking at, once they have encountered their own moment of confusion. Painting, photography? Or something existing in the space between the two?

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Light and shadow are the two founding principles of our images. We do not consider them merely as ways of illuminating or darkening a scene, but as elements of the composition in their own right, just like an object or a piece of fruit. Working on the image therefore becomes something akin to the work of both a sculptor and a conductor: shaping shadow and light while modulating their textures, intensity and, of course, rhythm.

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Although we continue to study paintings and methodically dissect the “ways” of painters from the past — the Italians of the Renaissance, the Flemish masters and other, later artists — what we ultimately seek is to absorb, on an emotional level, that which in a painting lies beyond words.

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We work with historical, sometimes archaeological objects, lent by collectors and museums, as well as with reproductions. The backgrounds, tables and sets are created entirely from scratch, sometimes in collaboration with painters.