Shades of Blue, 2019

Antoine Rose   Emerging artists

The self-taught photographer, Antoine Rose, was born in Belgium, in 1974. At the age of 8, he began to explore the workings of a camera. Best known for his 'Up in the air' series, his works have featured in many private collections, as well as those for the MAD Museum, Tiffany & Co, Hermès Luxembourg, and Silvercup Studios.

With his passion for travelling, and his love of the sea, he is frequently commissioned by Kitesurfing brands and events. Inspired by Cézanne's 'Bathers' series, and by the photography of Massimo Vitali, he shoots pictures of beaches from a helicopter, and then prints his photographs in an oversized format (at least 3 metres wide). This approach to aerial photography blurs details, and gives us a very minimalist, easy-on-the-eye impression of a scene which is, nonetheless, a familiar sight.

The photographer toys with our senses: the beach appears to have structure, as if each person, each parasol, and each towel has been purposefully positioned. By capturing ant-sized people in his photographs, Antoine Rose highlights the insignificance of man within the crippling vastness of the universe.