Robert Charlotte’s Sous influence series is a reflection on the photographic act of portraiture, much like previous series executed by the artist. His work is a form of systematic and automatic writing, which is based on the mystical or faith in our Caribbean societies, playing subtle manipulations of the mind, in order to observe, see, photograph and try make visible the invisible, the intimate. Inspired by the title of a song by Keziah Jones, “Unintended Consequences”; during the shooting of the series of portraits, Charlotte plays the same soundtrack in loop. He then invites his models to coat their body, without any guidelines, with coal reduced to powder. The idea being that the subject transforms the idea of his own image, awakening traces or marks of a real-life experience. The music influences and brings each model to have a particular behaviour, an attitude, from which the artist draws his images. The tight framing of the portrait excluded any form of control over the physical conditions of life of the characters with only their intense look, accompanied marks, left to leave the viewers imagination to understand or live the story.

Charlotte’s most recent solo show, CORRESPONDENCE, took place at Alliance Française as a part of Nuku Photo Festival, Accra (2018) and later in 2019 at espace d’art contemporain 14N 61W. He has had group shows in Martinique, Guadeloupe, Cuba, France, Germany and the United Kingdom, among others.