MARGES
Jérémie Lenoir
Texts by Fabien Ribéry and Pierre Wat
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.
«This confusion occurs like a struggle during which the photographer must use the strength of a painter in order to face the reality that is so blinding.»
Fabien Ribéry's text, author and professor of modern literature, reviewer of photobooks on the blog ‘L’Intervalle’, completes the whole :
« The ground is shifted around, mixed up, recomposed, in a game played out between scales of magnitude. Jérémie Lenoir's photographs are walls that have been scratched, clawed, crosshatched [...] what we perceive remains an enigma of creases, of routes and diversions, that is akin to one of Simon Hantaï's folded canvases. We are at the heart of a tangle of dust, of a madly meticulous geometry, of barricades of nothingness. We are within a basic language. »
Jérémie Lenoir's works including MARGES are represented by the parisian gallery Galerie Guillaume.
Technical features
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- Release date : 23 January 2025
- Photographs : Jérémie Lenoir
- Texts: Pierre Wat, and Fabien Ribéry
- Graphic design: Lucie Baratte
- Format : 29,5 x 31,5 cm
- 86 pages – 45 photographs
- Print run of 1200 copies (600 for Light Motiv)
- Co-production with Jérémie Lenoir (for his gallery Galerie Guillaume)
- Internal papers : Munken Polar Rough 150gr (photographs and texts) / Fedrigoni Sirio Black (endpapers)
- Four-colour Printing
- Fonts: Knockout d’Hoefler & Frere-Jones, FF DIN d’A.-J. Pool
- ISBN : 9791095118305
- Public price (with VAT): 44 €
Press and booksellers' comments
You can view or download the press release kit (visuals, book cover, book layout and press release PDF).
« Il faut y regarder de plus près pour se rendre compte qu’il s’agit de photographies tellement elles frôlent l’abstraction. Jérémie Lenoir crée une topographie le long de la Seine, depuis sa confluence avec l’Yonne jusqu’à son embouchure au Havre en survolant les sites à 400 m. Avec un œil neuf se dessinent de nouveaux territoires contemporains. »
Ericka Weidmann, Réponses Photo, avril 2025
« Jérémie Lenoir nous transporte une nouvelle fois au cœur de paysages au graphisme abstrait qui sont autant de compositions fascinantes. Les chantiers, les friches, les carrières, les toitures, les zones de stockages deviennent par la magie de son œil sagace des territoires à la beauté renversante. Quelle la terre est belle vue d’en haut par l’entremise de ces images soigneusement construites. »
Le Miroir de l’Art, 2025
Current events
- The book was launched for the first time at la Chouette Librairie in Lille on Friday 31 january 2025 (from 7pm).
- Photo prints of MARGES were exhibited in the Plus Petite Galerie du Monde (ou Presque) in Roubaix from 2 to 22 february 2025.
- A book signing and talk with Jérémie Lenoir was organised on 19 february 2025 (from 7pm) in the bookshop L’oeil Cacodylate in Lyon.
- The exhibition opening « Topologies » by Jérémie Lenoir (showcasing images from the series NORD, DISTENSIONS and MARGES) happened on 20 february from 6pm to 9pm in the gallery Valérie Eymeric in Lyon.