Stanislas Sauvage



Projects:

   The Photographer’s Anxiety at the Shutter Release
   Digital Mob Football
   Flag
   The Constructed Condition
   DEBURAU

Commissions

About







The Photographer’s Anxiety at the Shutter Release explores analog photography as both a medium and a condition through which experiences of anxiety are articulated. The project considers how the photograph, often understood as a tool for fixing a moment, is equally defined by uncertainty, delay, and loss.

In contrast to the immediacy and control offered by digital photography, analog processes introduce a distance between action and result. Exposure, development, and printing become sites of unpredictability where the image cannot be fully anticipated or corrected. This uncertainty is not incidental but central, shaping both the outcome of the work and the emotional state of its making.

Through a series of interconnected works, the project engages with themes of mortality, social anxiety, absence, and the limits of representation. Furthermore the work focuses on the photographic process itself, foregrounding gestures such as overexposure, contact printing, and intentional disruption. These approaches embrace the instability of the medium, allowing chance and material conditions to inform the image.

 Rather than resolving anxiety, the work situates it within the photographic act, where each image becomes a trace of something already slipping away. In this sense, the project reflects on impermanence not only as a subject, but as something embedded within the structure and experience of photography itself.
Self portrait with overlaid cut-out darkroom filter strips.
203mm x 254mm, Archival silver gelatin print 
Kentmere Glossy finish
Blank sheet of black & white darkroom paper placed in paper processor machine as it needed maintenance
203mm x 254mm, Archival silver gelatin print
Kentmere Matte finish

Installation view (The Photographer’s Anxiety at the Shutter Release)
University of Brighton MA summer show
Grand Parade Gallery, July 2026
6x6 medium format negative contact sheet
203mm x 254mm, Archival silver gelatin print
Kentmere Matte finish
Contact print from damaged 35mm negative
203mm x 254mm, Archival silver gelatin print 
Kentmere Matte finish
Darkroom print made from acetate negative extracted from contact sheet scan.
 203mm x 254mm, Archival silver gelatin print
Kentmere Glossy finish
Darkroom paper box scan with digitally overlaid self portrait
203mm x 254mm, Archival giclée print
Canson High Gloss finish
Blank sheet of black & white darkroom paper placed in paper processor machine as it needed maintenance
203mm x 254mm, Archival silver gelatin print
Kentmere Matte finish
Darkroom paper box scan with digitally overlaid self portrait
203mm x 254mm, Archival giclée print
Canson High Gloss finish
Double self portrait darkroom print
203mm x 254mm, Archival silver gelatin print
Kentmere Glossy finish
Digitally made multiple exposure from seven negative scans, made into digital negative and darkroom printed
203mm x 254mm, Archival silver gelatin print 
Kentmere Glossy finish
6x6.45 medium format negative contact sheet
203mm x 254mm, Archival silver gelatin print
Kentmere Matte finish
Digital negative printed on acetate
210 x 297 mm, Archival acetate print