A01=Geraldine Lay
A15=Robert McLiam Wilson
Age Group_Uncategorized
Age Group_Uncategorized
Author_Geraldine Lay
automatic-update
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=AJB
Category=AJCD
COP=France
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
eq_art-fashion-photography
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
Language_English
PA=Available
Price_€20 to €50
PS=Active
softlaunch
Product details
- ISBN 9782330109172
- Weight: 920g
- Publication Date: 03 Jan 2019
- Publisher: Actes Sud
- Publication City/Country: FR
- Product Form: Hardback
- Language: English
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
After Failles Ordinaires (2012) which revealed Géraldine Lay’s keen eye and original talent, the photographer here continues her urban explorations of humanity in Great Britain.
Faithful to her precise, detailed method and ever attentive to the potential for surprise and chance in any setting, Géraldine Lay mentally apprehends her territories before photographing them. She senses the light and atmosphere, immersing herself in a setting rather than reconnoitring, an approach that brings intimacy to the heart of anonymity.
Some critics have rightly highlighted the cinematographic dimension of the artist’s work but such an interpretation overlooks the essentially photographic nature of her pursuit and, in each of her ‘photograms’, her exacting work reminds us how photography was invented before cinema, and had a special ability to capture and hold the delicately ephemeral. In doing so, she creates a new aesthetic unique to the photographic craft, an aesthetic that imbues all of her work.
As we traverse suburban streets and squares, lives are captured in the mystery of their daily existence. As the Irish writer, Robert McLiam Wilson writes, ‘People walk and wait. They talk, drink coffee. They cross streets. They work. They move about. Citizens busy with citizen things. Like all citizens everywhere, they are multiple, varied, various. Men, women, children. They are also British. Incredibly British. They couldn’t come from anywhere else.’ In an age of exponential standardized universality, Géraldine Lay’s photography reaffirms both the permanence of unusual individualities and the resistance of collective identities.
Faithful to her precise, detailed method and ever attentive to the potential for surprise and chance in any setting, Géraldine Lay mentally apprehends her territories before photographing them. She senses the light and atmosphere, immersing herself in a setting rather than reconnoitring, an approach that brings intimacy to the heart of anonymity.
Some critics have rightly highlighted the cinematographic dimension of the artist’s work but such an interpretation overlooks the essentially photographic nature of her pursuit and, in each of her ‘photograms’, her exacting work reminds us how photography was invented before cinema, and had a special ability to capture and hold the delicately ephemeral. In doing so, she creates a new aesthetic unique to the photographic craft, an aesthetic that imbues all of her work.
As we traverse suburban streets and squares, lives are captured in the mystery of their daily existence. As the Irish writer, Robert McLiam Wilson writes, ‘People walk and wait. They talk, drink coffee. They cross streets. They work. They move about. Citizens busy with citizen things. Like all citizens everywhere, they are multiple, varied, various. Men, women, children. They are also British. Incredibly British. They couldn’t come from anywhere else.’ In an age of exponential standardized universality, Géraldine Lay’s photography reaffirms both the permanence of unusual individualities and the resistance of collective identities.
Born in 1972, Géraldine Lay graduated from the ENSP in 1997. She has been represented by Le Réverbère Gallery in Lyon since 2005. She lives in Arles and works for Actes Sud. Born in Belfast in 1964, Robert McLiam Wilson has written three novels: Ripley Bogle (1989), Manfred’s Pain (1992) and Eureka Street (1996).
