For the past fifteen years, Laurent Lafolie’s research has focused on the mechanisms by which images appear and are perceived. Recognised as one of the best printers of his generation, he has made experimentation with chemistry, medium choices (washi, tracing paper, silk, glass, ceramics) and printing processes (contact, platinum, UV printing, stamping, enamelling) an artistic challenge. What these projects have in common is the use of transparency or invisibility as a vanishing point for the viewer’s gaze. The presentation devices play on the arrangement and positioning of the images: suspension and superimposition, inversion, accumulation and transfer within picture-boxes, sculptures and installations. Laurent Lafolie creates photographic objects whose interpretation is altered by the viewer’s movements around and in front of the works.
Capture R 118, série i|i.02
Analogue screen capture of 118 portraits taken using a view camera, platinum-palladium contact print on cotton paper
133 x 106 cm
52 3/8 x 41 3/4 in
2024
Unique piece
Entitled Capture, this project takes the form of an analogue screen capture, bringing together a succession of faces. The final printed portrait is the sum of all these faces recorded by the photosensitive paper. This approach questions the utopian nature of the photo portrait, which cannot be reduced to mere appearance. It explores the mystery of what connects and distinguishes us collectively.
“Philosopher Emmanuel Lévinas says the face testifies to our humanity and is the place where we meet others in their destitution, fragility and mortality. These faces are the disturbing manifestation of an anonymous portrait captured at the junction of the likeness between the singular and the general, the individual and the collective. They beautify the common element just as they erase the signs of assignment to an age group or gender. “ – Laurent Lafolie