Belgian photographer Maroesjka Lavigne’s debut monograph is Someone, Somewhere, Sometime, and includes four of the artist’s series: Island, Not Seeing is a Flower, Land of Nothingness, and Lost Lands. Lavigne has shared with IGNANT a selection of images from the last chapter of the book, Lost Lands; compelling images of sublime landscapes and their inhabitants. Lavigne has traveled extensively—her preoccupation with documenting the earth’s vast range of natural landscapes has seen her travel to Iceland, Argentina, Chile, Japan, Namibia, China, and America’s West, among others. The monograph collates together a decade’s worth of work, and in her latest release she continues her exploration of the aesthetic qualities of earth; bringing to light the majestic spectrum of colors it demonstrates. For Lavigne, nature is unconquerable and omnipresent. “When you take a picture in a beautiful place, you have to realize that nature isn’t the background for your photograph. Rather, you are its prop,” she remarks in a statement on the Robert Mann Gallery’s website.
Lavigne’s approach to landscape photography transforms the viewer’s understanding of surface, depth, subject, and place. We tune in to the finer details—the texture of a volcano backdropped by peach colored clouds, the feathers of birds and the layers of mountains—yet Lavigne’s lens reworks the context in which these moments are captured. She presents a narrative in which the passing of time in these surreal environments is contested; a haunting reminder of life’s impermanence. Lost Lands is the artist’s third solo exhibition with the Robert Mann Gallery in New York, and is open in conjunction with her newly released monograph, Someone, Somewhere, Sometime.
Courtesy of Ignant