fleurs artificielles

series of 20 photograms,

cyanotype  on paper,  36x48cm, 2015

This series plays with botanical classifications  with reference to the history of the cyanotype,  in homage to Anna Atkins, a 19th century British botanist who was one of the first  to use this technique to make herbaria by placing algae and plants directly on the paper coated with sensitive solution. These are photograms of false flowers, as the title reveals, which are doubly so  : first by the very material of the flowers in question, which are all synthetic  ; but also by the arrangement of the stems, leaves and flowers, which can be very fanciful according to the images of the series and which does not correspond to any real plant, even imitated.

It is a question of questioning what can say about the real  a referential image (the herbarium in general, and in particular, that of Anna Atkins  ; but also from a technical point of view, the photogram) which swallows up the meaning of the images produced and makes the inaccuracies, the floral fantasies, invisible by passing them off as real. A closer look reveals them and allows us to reflect on the way in which the imagery screens and masks the images rather than allowing them to be seen.