> Esther Ségal
Michel Kirch: Heaven on Earth
Old age, here we come. A long-standing appointment with this moment of great significance (1), the work of photographer Michel Kirch mirrors this line by Saint-John Perse, a body of work with an appointment in a multidimensional universe where each photograph is a fictional particle belonging to a grand whole that tells us the story of the creation of the world. Michel Kirch engages the viewer by creating visual architectures that blend myths, symbols, and the beauty of the world. In a spiraling and spiritual momentum, the viewer’s gaze is thus directed back to the center of the artist’s concerns: life.
He composes a hymn to life where every living being enters an original dance from before the fall. The archetypes emerge from the long silence where today's noise-filled society has buried them. They rise in the midst of this waking dream that the artist presents in his photographs, a dream that resonates and reasons, between emotion and reflection, questioning consciences without friction or anger.
Michel Kirch is a philosopher of the image but also an existential poet who brings together eternity, surrealism, and the sacred. He instills in his works an emotional climate that makes us collectively ponder the pillars of our world: the elements, humanity, nature, and time. Can we speak of clairvoyance? Of visions? It is certain that in an era where photographic art serves a society searching for itself, Michel Kirch takes the risk of making us rediscover the priorities of existence.
(1). Saint-John Perse, “Chronicle”.
Esther Ségal
Columnist and artist