2023-12-07 22:00:04
Photograph 1
« The Third Atlas », d’Eric Tabuchi
Extract from “The Third Atlas”, by Eric Tabuchi. PURSUIT
We know the artist Eric Tabuchi for his formidable Atlas of natural regions (Pursuit, 2019, 2020), current project in which he photographs all of France, carried out with his accomplice Nelly Monnier. But this typology obsessive also likes to inventory places he has not visited. In 2017, his book Atlas of Forms (Pursuit) classified the architectures of the world according to their geometric shapes, in a sort of rigorous and crazy catalog. Here he is inventing a third atlas, produced using the generative artificial intelligence (AI) Midjourney. While the tool is a repellent for many photographers, he wanted to explore its ability to create new images. In an atmosphere of apocalypse – the most successful part of the book – we are plunged into an ultra-technological world, struck by a catastrophe: we go from a science fiction atmosphere with a vintage feel to scenes of war and destruction or strange abstractions. The rest of the book sees the survivors raising new constructions, which are distant reminders of known places or events – which is not surprising, since the AI creates from existing references. The end of the work sees the advent of utopian, multicolored and baroque buildings, which ultimately remain quite smooth and repetitive. As if to show the inability of AI to compete (for the moment) with the inventiveness of nature and human imagination, which enchanted previous books.
« The Third Atlas », d’Eric Tabuchi, Poursuite, 320 p., 39 €.
Photograph 2
“Ground Noise”, by Céline Clanet
Far from the comforting visions of peaceful nature, Céline Clanet reveals the teeming life hidden in the infinitely small of forests. Using an electron microscope, she reveals tiny insects and arthropods buried in the humus beneath our feet. These strange and slightly disturbing negative images, which show delicate wings and legs isolated or intertwined, alternate with those taken using a conventional camera, of trees or paths, as if to reveal the other side of the forest: a complex underground world, full of life and tiny animal existence, which tempts us not to believe our crude human eyes.
“Ground Noise”, by Céline Clanet, Actes Sud, 128 p., €32
Photography 3
“Unfinished Stories”, by Paz Errazuriz
First book in French dedicated to the Chilean Paz Errazuriz, these Unfinished stories accompany the exhibition, at the Maison de l’Amérique Latine (until January 24), dedicated to this great photographer whose life and career were marked by the Pinochet dictatorship. Fired from the school where she was a teacher because of her union commitment, Paz Errazuriz then turned to photography as a self-taught person, to resist in her own way – with images and metaphors. His various documentary series focus on the margins, on these communities that the ultraliberal military regime ignores, excludes, even oppresses: the poor, prostitutes, transvestites, boxers, circus artists, mentally ill, blind… Each time, Paz Errazuriz sets out to meets people, connects with them and takes natural and intimate portraits, whose softness testifies to the bond that is created. “I wanted to know who they were, and also to know myself”says the photographer, now 79 years old, who has always seen her images as a double mirror, “a reflection to infinity”.
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