University Press plc – förlag

Entitled Laure Tiberghien, this book is the first monograph to be published on the artist. It brings together 84 prints, allowing the reader to gain an appreciation of 10 years of work and experimentation. Tiberghien is intrigued by the visual and plastic aspects of photography and enjoys exploring the inventive potential of this medium. She has developed a process avoiding the use of the camera that takes its place within a long lineage of experimentation in photography, which has notably given rise to Anna Atkins’ cyanotypes and Man Ray’s Rayographs. Produced through the combination of chemistry, light and time, her “abstract” photographs emerge from a masterful approach to composition, whereby colours are organized after having been tested first to obtain the desired tone relationships. The surface, in this case the type of paper selected, also plays a primordial role. For example, Cibachrome results in a “wet” effect and very dense colours whereas a metallic paper offers a more electric result. If at times she may leave things open to accident or chance, while giving life to shapes and colours Tiberghien has put in place a procedure, through her constant testing, that although far from mechanical affords her control over the result. All the pieces she produces in this manner are necessarily unique, another feature her art shares with painting. The book’s design, by the studio SP Millot, arrays the text of the essay by Erik Verhagen across its pages, in a way that punctuates the images just as the images propel the text.