Born in 1973, Estelle Lagarde is both an architect and a photographer. Her photography series, made using a view camera, stage human figures in abandoned places: prison, factory, inn, hospital, residence… She tells stories gleaned from the past, as if with a promise of giving them a new life. The human figures appearing in the images are like ghosts conjured up by our memory, attempting “to come back to the land of the living.” The artist also draws on personal experience, for example in the series Adénocarcinome, which is an artistic sublimation of her struggle with breast cancer, which first brought her to the attention of the general public in 2010. One of the photos was exhibited at the Royal Monastery of Brou in 2015 as part of the exhibition In the Shadow of Eros.
De Anima Lapidum—On the Soul of Stones—is a new series in which architecture plays a more important role than in the artist’s earlier work. Lagarde highlights relationships that develop between the ephemeral human condition and the seemingly eternal monuments: “Unlike in my earlier works, inspired by buildings slated for demolition or conversion, which would deprive them of all their essence, I want to carry out a project in places that are indeed permanent. While previously I was fascinated by the finite nature of built structures, which resonates with our own mortality, I now find myself fascinated with the eternal character of some buildings: they seem to resist the action of time.”
Between 2013 and 2017, the photographer traveled across France, making images in religious structures of different eras and of different sizes. In addition to the Royal Monastery of Brou in Bourg-en-Bresse (Ain), she planted her tripod in the parish churches of Saint-Gervais-Protais in Gisors (Eure) and Saint-Jacques in Dieppe (Seine-Maritime), the Saint-Ouen Abbey and the Notre-Dame Cathedral in Rouen in Normandy; in the churches of Saint-Vincent de Paul and Saint-Sulpice in Paris; the parish church Saint-Denys in Arcueil (Val de Marne); as well as in the Tarnac church (Corrèze), the Saint-Louis Chapel in Bar-le-Duc (Meuse), the Saint-Julien Cathedral and the Saint-Michel and Notre-Dame de la Couture crypts in Mans (Sarthe).
These buildings are not only the setting for her images, but veritable actors. Estelle Lagarde’s personal sensibility and professional training as an architect allow her to fulfill “the ambition of paying homage to these spaces by exploring their sacred, spiritual and human dimensions.”
Magali Briat-Philippe
Magali Briat-Philippe is a heritage conservator and head of the heritage department at the Royal Monastery of Brou, Bourg-en-Bresse, France.
Estelle Lagarde, De anima lapidum
May 12 to August 27, 2017
Monastère Royal de Brou
63 Boulevard de Brou
01000 Bourg-en-Bresse
France
