The work of Marguerite Bornhauser consists of many series, all made using both analogue and digital means. She uses different alternative processes like photograms, printing on silk and plexiglass, painting on glass, and mixing analogue with the digital workflow. "I am hooked on the analogue. I like the sensibility of the analogue material, which I don't find in the digital."

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The extensive series When Black is Burned, which comprises many diptychs, is colourful, vibrant, and enigmatic. All highly saturated colour photographs, if you can still call them that, or photo works, show intimate details of daily life. You see a face, parts of a body, plants, leaves, fishes, fences, shadows, and water. It seems like a diary of lazy Sundays and dreamy summers, introverted and meditative. The photo works have an intense aesthetic radiance, vibrating colours, and abstract compositions.

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Analogue 

The photos are taken with a small analogue camera. Later, they are scanned and digitally processed. Marguerite Bornhauser explains how the project came into being. "When Black is Burned is a project mainly about shadows and contrast and turning daily life into an enigmatic world. As you can hear in the title, the shadows have been digitally and strongly pushed to the blacks, so you might say I burned the black. It makes the images super contrasty. I play with the shadows as if I painted with a brush to create shadows and colours. I wanted to make it sensible and very graphic as well. In this way, the shadows are intensely black, resulting in very bright colours." 

I am really hooked on the analogue because of that magic.

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What is the importance of using an analogue camera instead of a fast and easy-to-use digital camera? "With a digital camera, I would take too many pictures, but with film photography, I am more conscious of my decisions. I only take one picture at a time, just the one I want. I think twice before putting away a picture; on a film roll, I am attentive to all the pictures. I also love the feeling of waiting until I develop them. Taking pictures with film gives me a lot of joy. I am really hooked on the analogue because of that magic. I like the sensation of the paper, colours, and sensibility of the analogue material that I don't find in digital. Moreover, the process is tactile. I also like the manual way of working. I use a colour film from the 70s with very saturated colours." 

Diptychs 

The photos in the series are all juxtaposed in diptychs, making them communicate with each other. The diptychs create a mysterious effect, avoiding an easy denotative conclusion from the subject matter in the photos. "The subject matter is less important than the image itself because it is not documentary photography. I like to combine two images, which, on their own, would not be that interesting. Putting them together initiates deeper communication, creates associations, and tells a different story. I imagine an image as a word, and then I create sentences. I create a language with images. In this way, it becomes very poetic, without a beginning or end. You can also compare it to music because I create harmonies and melodies." 

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The work of Bornhauser could be inscribed into the field of personal storytelling. She does not refer to realistic diaristic stories but creates highly personal or open and associative stories. The process is not intellectual but more sensible and very intuitive. "My work is a lot about observing in a contemplative way. I can stare at a leaf and see the light going through it, and at that moment, I feel that this is where the poetry happens, and then I take that picture. Sometimes, when I'm not sure what to do with images I get, I save them on my hard drive and in film cases for later use." 

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Everyday life

The photographs could be read as Japanese koans. "I love Japanese photography and poetry. It is about daily life. We usually take more pictures on holidays because we look at things freshly; after all, it's the first time we see them. But the more we see them, the less interest we have in them. I want to learn to always look at the things I see daily with passion and interest, or at least with a different eye."

I want to see the poetry around me.

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Bornhauser wants to see poetry in daily life. "What connects all my works is that it's always a question of poetry in everyday life, trying to observe and show things differently and in my way. We all look different, and our eyes are attracted to very different things. I want to see the poetry around me, and sometimes, I try to create beauty out of the ordinary places around me."

The quest for poetry makes her take close-up shots from nearby instead of showing the world around the subject she photographs. "I never take pictures with context because I like to extract something out of its surroundings. That's what makes it more poetic."

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Fermé pour travaux

One series called Fermé pour travaux (closed for construction works) was not made with a camera. The series consists of colourful abstract photograms, all made in the Grand Palais during construction in Paris, the place where Paris Photo used to take place. The closure of the Grand Palais for construction works in 2021 gave Marguerite full access and the liberty to create several artworks from this historical change in the monument. In the tradition of Man Ray, when Marguerite Bornhauser found objects at the construction site, she archived them with the date and place where she found them, placed them, not on black and white, but on light-sensitive colour paper, and produced inverted photocopies of the objects. "During the renovation of the Grand Palais, I was invited to take pictures in whichever way I wanted to, without any strict assignment. When I saw all kinds of objects scattered around on the floor, I decided to make colour photograms. I put each object on the paper and turned the colour filters to different values to obtain a variety of colours. I wanted the objects to be dragged into another world different from theirs."
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Shadows

The latest series, Do ghosts have shadows, aren't flat pictures but are presented as sculptures created by the artist Léa Dumayet. The two artists have been collaborating since 2015, creating installations that are sculptural and photographic at the same time. “The photos are printed on plexiglass, so they can be seen from both sides. They will be hung from the ceiling to the floor to form a three-dimensional installation." 

The pictures are inverted into negatives and digitally painted on. Marguerite Bornhauser explains: "This series of photos-sculptures created with Léa Dumayet is an enigmatic, phantomatic trip at the margin between materials and colours, tensions and fluctuations, distortions, reflections on plexiglass, a conversation of two mediums as an invitation into a poetic, fantastic world.” 

Chimera

Another work she did with Léa Dumayet is titled Chimera. This work also leaves the flat picture behind and gets a three-dimensional shape. Each piece consists of a photograph printed on light silk, revealing the image on each side of the fabric by transparency. The silk prints are stretched, distended, and held by industrial materials. The black and twisted lines of metal evoke the spine of a chimerical, monstrous, luminous, and fluid animal. The work shows Bornhauser's affinity for sculpture and the multidimensional art world. "The idea of creating a sculpture and seeing the photos from different perspectives drags photography into another world. We artists have to experiment with the medium, and I like doing that."

Marguerite Bornhauser is an artist, photographer that was born in 1989 and lives and works in Paris. After studying literature and journalism, she joined the National School of Photography in Arles and graduated in 2015. Her first solo show was at the museum of European Photography in Paris (MEP) in 2019. Her work is represented in several places in Europe: in Portugal by Galeria Carlos Carvalho, in Switzerland and Netherlands by Bildhale and has been shown in art institutions, galleries and art festivals in many different countries and cities such as France, Cincinnati, London, Brussels, Portugal, Istanbul, Switzerland, Japan, Spain, Amsterdam, Bahreïn, etc. Her work has also been exhibited in public spaces; in the subway in Paris in 27 stations and billboards in USA with the Cincinnati art museum.

The series Do ghosts have shadows will be presented from 17 December 2022 to 25 March 2023 in the gallery Carlos Carvalho Arte in Lisbon.

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