MARGES avec tirage

MARGES is a photographic work carried out between 2012 and 2024 along the Seine, from its confluence with the Yonne to its mouth at Le Havre. Quite literally, Jérémie Lenoir flies over these territories following a very precise shooting protocol used in all his aerial missions. Always at the same altitude of 400 metres, always around midday, when the sun is at its zenith, crushing the shadows on the landscapes, making people lose their bearings and confusing the scales.

In this project, he continues his anthropology of landscapes by exploring the boundary between town and countryside, that line of tension where the ferocious globalisation of the forms, uses and functions of our living spaces is inscribed in the earth. Construction sites, wastelands, quarries, roofs and storage facilities take on abstract and symbolic features that attract the eye, opening the way to a sensitive, poetic and plastic contemplation, and enabling Lenoir to perfect his original semiotics of contemporary territories.

‘It looks like...’ is the expression often heard when looking at his photographs, which often touch on the abstract, sometimes taking on the air of paintings. Rains of cement, an ancient wall, microscopic stains, ice skate streaks, paint drips... all our imagination is summoned because we do not recognise anything tangible. It is an unexpected survey of contemporary traces, a calligraphic survey that he gives us, seen from the sky. A worrying erasure, a marvellous abstraction, which guides the photographer's research into the aesthetics of disappearance.

Jérémie Lenoir's photographs are followed with a new text written by art historian Pierre Wat who strenghtens the illusion game between photography and painting played by Jérémie Lenoir.

« Cette confusion se fait à la façon d’une lutte durant laquelle il s’agit pour le photographe d’user de la force du peintre, afin d’affronter ensemble le réel si aveuglant. »

Author and literature professorFabien Ribéry wrote a text on Marges. He has a blog ‘L’Intervalle’ on which he writes reviews about contemporary photobooks. HIs blog is nowadays considered as an official archive for the French national library.

« Le sol est remué, brassé, recomposé, dans le jeu s’élaborant entre les échelles de grandeur… Les photographies de Jérémie Lenoir sont des parois grattées, griffées, hachurées […] Ce que nous devinons reste une énigme de plis, de routes et de déroutes, telle une toile froissée de Simon Hantaï. Nous sommes au coeur d’un écheveau de poussières, d’une géométrie follement minutieuse, de barricades du néant. Nous sommes dans du langage fondamental ».

La série MARGES de Jérémie Lenoir est exposé à la Galerie Guillaume à Paris, jusqu’au 17 janvier 2025.