Finalists – Prix Picto de la Mode 2025 : Ella Bats

Ella Bats explores the connection between the visible and the invisible through digital photography. In her series “Espace des fragments”, she interrogates the concept of dark matter, which, though invisible, shapes our reality. Through layering and shifts, she unveils the deep layers of the human being, blending memory and physical reality. Her visual approach highlights these inner fragments that compose our existence, offering a poetic and enigmatic representation of our inner world.

Biography

Ella Bats is a French photographer artist based in Paris. She graduated in art and graphic design from ENSAAMA and later attended the Gobelins School of Image for photography until 2017. What is evident in her work is the proximity between painting and material that she translates through art, fashion, and portraiture. Ella Bats explores the medium of digital photography, utilizing the capabilities of retouching through layering, multiplication, and fusion of different layers. She questions the connections between an individual’s inner world and how it can be represented. She establishes an intimate dialogue with her subjects, allowing their humanity to appear uniquely. Photography has always been, for her, both a
means of representing a world and an attempt to understand others.

Entrelacs

Dark matter neither emits, absorbs, nor reflects light. It is only known to the world because of its gravitational effects on the visible. With ‘Espace des fragments’, it finally reveals itself to us . It enters our visual
realm. The fractured landscape, bodies and scenery, the visible and invisible at once woven into an enigmatic, graphic, and vibrant dance, all conjure up an image of this fragment – a fragment which lives within every one of us. Time no longer exists, reality merges into memories, mental projections into corporeal truths. Dark matter binds our fragments together – physically, spatially and humanly. Superimpositions, ghosting, blur spots and aberrations in the photographic process shed light on this fragment. ‘Espace des fragments ’ uncovers the presence of a shadow sister moulding each moment of our lives.