Folding, assembling, punching holes in, and weaving paper: Marc-Antoine Garnier’s (b. 1989) work subverts the two dimensions of the photographic print. Is this photography? For him, the act of taking a photograph is merely a preliminary step; the existence of the future image is shaped by other, subsequent gestures that come together to construct a space of paper surfaces. Large rolls of sunsets arranged in a bare room re-create a colorful harmony; a speckled blue sky sees the movement of its clouds replayed by the cutout of the framed image, in several undulating strips. At the outset, then, there is Marc-Antoine Garnier, who photographs not so much “on location” as the subject itself, anticipating the gestures—often multiple—that will accompany him in re-establishing it in space. His subject is always natural; his raw material is the infinity of the great elements. Recently, he has been diving into the infinite world of plants, his lens in a jungle of branches or a forest of petals, to seek out, on the surface of their image, the perceived form still contained within the thickness of the paper: the long, slender leaves are woven together and regain their untamed nature, while the speckles of flower clusters, through scraping, resurface.
