An Upside Down World By Philippe Ramette

In Balcony 2, he is standing on a balcony in the middle of Hong Kong harbour, contemplating the sky while seemingly managing to levitate above the water. He says the image first came to him in a dream in the mid-90s. For the shoot, a watertight tank served as an underwater float for the balcony, put in place by a barge and crane. Ramette then secured his feet on supports, leaned back and clung to the wood. During the initial attempts, he was soaked by waves and had to swim to safety.
He craves an effect of absolute, implausible serenity. For the series Rational Exploration Of The Undersea, he wore lead weights under his suit and around his ankles, having convinced a team of divers to work with him in a minutely rehearsed underwater escapade off Corsica. When Ramette needed air, a diver would swim over with an oxygen tank, but before shooting his team had to wait for the whipped up sand and bubbles to clear in order to achieve the effect of stillness. "There I was in a suit on the seabed, weighed down and able to walk underwater as if on land, unaffected by the currents. For me, that was a real pleasure," he smiles.