One of the impacts of the pandemic and the universal order to stay at home has been the inescapable confrontation with ourselves. Our ordinarily busy lives, crammed with productivity, commitments and socialising, have been abruptly exchanged for time alone with our thoughts. 

In a strange turn of events, photographer Matthieu Croizier had almost pre-empted this confrontation with self when he embarked on a form of creative isolation in his apartment to create a body of work titled, Everything Goes Dark a Little Further Down. “I had locked myself in my home in Lausanne, so I just continued when the Covid-19 lockdowns happened,” Croizier says. “I was alone and my mood was constantly changing. I went a bit mad at times, as it was very intense, but at the same time, it was great to be experimenting.”

The project, which had been in research and development for several months, investigates the concept of ordinary monstrosity – unravelling the boundaries between what is thought of as normal and abnormal, using the body as a primary material. The photographs depict an extraordinary act of metamorphosis. Fragments are melded together to create something new that conjures up visions of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Claude Cahun’s shapeshifting expressions of identity. Our sense of perception is destabilised as he uses the photograph as a space to shape and complicate notions of self-representation.