Creator of comic strips until he was 30, Cédric Roulliat naturally turned to photography, fascinated by popular forms of narration such as cinema, the photo novel or advertising. Born in 1973, Cédric Roulliat is self-taught. At 17, he found his grandfathers equipment in the attic: a film camera, lenses and an enlarger made in the 70s. Cédric Roulliat;s models appear in scenes based essentially female figures of desire, loneliness or madness, standardized emotional pantone of Hollywood B series. Incongruous situations or clichés, flirting with the absurd and madness in a normalized, stereotyped universe. Here, the still image suggests a larger story, there is a before and an after, a past and a future, like an enigma to solve, a puzzle to complete, a series to follow. Between the imagery of Guy Bourdin, the universe of Alan Moore, and the pen of BE Ellis, his artificially conceived scenes are also a tribute to the golden age of Hollywood, influenced by the fantastic, American classicism, black series, or the brothers Grimm. The composition is reversed in front of the classic models, men become objects in front of women with exacerbated testosterone, for a more disturbing rendering. Man is an object of desire, an artificial plastic Ken.

Beyond the aesthetic rendering and the underlying emotion, Cédric Roulliats credo lies in his desire to challenge the spectator, to make him question himself, to lead him towards a feeling of strangeness and questioning. With a palpable and vibrant sensual charge, the image has a narrative function, it sublimates and exposes. For him, the use of the nude makes it possible to draw the image towards a timeless and symbolic dimension. Cédric Roulliat is putting on a play, “ultra-Girl against Schopenhauer”, which will be performed in Lyon in February 2017, with actors Sahra Daugreilh, Laure Giappiconi and David Bescond. At the same time, he continues his eternal search for graphic places serving as a backdrop for his new stagings. He is also preparing the release of a book bringing together his work over the last ten years.