Laurent Millet : ‘Les Monolithes’ Series (Photography)

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‘Les Monolithes’
chromogenic dye print
20 x 24 in
2002
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The 2002 photography series ‘Les Monolithes’ is dark and imposing. To create it, Millet returned to the shoreline with pitch-black squarish shapes resting in the water. “I was looking for very minimalistic shapes,” he says, “that could be seen, on the one hand, as almost three-dimensional, and on the other hand, like a black hole in the picture.” The images were inspired by Richard Serra’s engravings, but he also had in mind the history of the beaches at Normandy, where the Canadians tried to disembark during World War II but were killed because their boats couldn’t land on the rocky shore.

“In my imagination,” says Millet, “I was seeing these engines, half-covered by the water, like geometric shapes.” It’s not necessary to know what he was thinking when he made these pictures to feel they have a somber quality. And yet there is a delicacy about them too, in the irregularity of their outside lines, and in the flimsiness of the shapes themselves. “I have a strong necessity to build things,” he says, “but now my constructions have become faster and lighter.” [Extract : Robert Mann Gallery]

Laurent Millet : Photography

Laurent Millet : Cargo

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