The final exhibition of the season for Le Château d’Eau toulousain, before returning to its renovated historic premises on November 17th: three series by photographer Anaïs Tondeur, who combines science and artistic practice. A field artist, she records the silver imprint of polluted and even dangerous substances present in the air, plants, and the earth itself. Her approach is deliberately committed, with the idea of a political art that provides a new presence of the elements, and would tell the story of the dangers of the evolution of our environment. Interview.
JJAder : How would you describe your work?
Anaïs Tondeur : Let’s call it attempts or experiments, through the photographic process, to give voice to non-human entities and to reveal their agency through the very materiality of the image. Plants, for example, reveal their own vegetal writing on the sensitive surface; in “Fleurs de feux,” this also creates a connection that develops with the philosopher of plant based thinking, Michael Marder (author of “La pensée végétale,” Les presses du réel).
JJA : And what about the rather dreamlike images in Chernobyl Herbarium?
AT : Here, it’s the radioactivity contained within the plant that helps expose the shape of its body on the photosensitive sheet. Moreover, as this project progresses, year after year, it allows for the establishment of a companionship with these plants that grow in extreme environments. So through these processes, I try to develop forms of attention protocols that highlight another form of presence of these entities.
JJA : Can we compare this to photograms?
AT : So, only part of the image is a photogram, the white outlines, for example, where the plant blocks the light, but all the dark areas are really the reaction between the phenol in the plant and the sensitive paper. So it’s this phytography, this plant writing, that is revealed by the plant itself.
JJA : Do you plan to continue or improve this approach?
AT : More recently, to continue revealing these disturbed entities, I’ve been exploring the soil of the former Kodak wasteland in Vincennes. Using a chromatography technique, I place a roll of paper in contact with the soil, which is itself loaded with silver salts and solvents—basically everything needed to take a photograph. By capillary action, the soil molecules rise up into the paper fibers, and then, quite magically, by exposing these prints to light, the writing on the soil is revealed within ten days. We were talking about prints, and ultimately, it’s this contact photography that interests me most.
Jean-Jacques Ader
Anaïs Tondeur’s exhibition “Ce que les yeux ne saisissent ” at the Le Château d’Eau gallery in Toulouse (at 58 allées Charles de Fitte during the works) from June 6 to August 31, 2025. Information: https://chateaudeau.toulouse.fr/
