The social world in which we live and the natural world to which we belong are antithetical, and should be acknowledged as such. In fact, society struggles against nature. For example, education is society's solution to 'natural' threats. Man's natural behaviour is a threat because he is naturally so self-centred (all that matters is his survival) that he is unable to live in a group (others would challenge his interests). As a result, society has to educate its members for them to live together. Education has to correct this inherent device. In other words, man is by nature an animal but his social life leads him to compromises. This is the reason why man has both natural and social natures. This is also the reason why man can be seen as both an animal and a human.This tension between culture and nature is central to the opposition between social worlds and natural worlds in human life. As a result, my work focuses on how man tries to control his nature, how his culture controls his needs, sensations and feelings. The key concepts of this reflexion are self-consciousness, self-restraint and self-criticism. Innocence, modesty, shame, hunger, narcissism and sexual attraction are featured in my pictures in order to understand to what extent man is both animal and human.

A huge part of human beings nowadays regards itself as nature's master. Admittedly, man's control of nature is considerable, but one cannot speak of mastery. The contemporary debate regarding environment comes from this mistake. Man's mastery seems to be an illusion. Man's activities are a major cause of irreversible changes to the planet. The problem is that their consequences and the general aggravation seem totally beyond man's power. Two pictures illustrate this point. The iguana/light picture parodies man's researches and advances in the biological field; the hairdryer/ bonsai picture evokes in a somewhat sarcastic manner man's influence on global warming. To put it in a nutshell, my work aims to reveal how human beings deal with their own nature and how they picture their responsibilities towards nature!