F&D Cartier
experimental photography
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F&D Cartier Françoise et Daniel Cartier Via unique one off creations of photo-based woks in constant transformation, we question the sense of the image, memory and lost, Time. We experimentally probe the essence of photography, its fundamentals, light, photosensitive materials, the turning point of analogue photography to digital >post-digital photography.
Minimalist experiments and performance, found objects, work without a camera, darkroom or chemicals > Wait and See, 1998 – Today : on-going research, in-situ installations of expired photosensitive materials exposed directly to the light of the exhibition spaces, luminograms left in perpetual transformation, left unfixed. The shared experience engages the audience to face reality instead of looking at a picture, invites them to be patient, and the history of photography is retraced, echoing subjectively the historical and artistic collateral events of the 19th and 20th centuries, by selecting for each iteration of our installations expired photographic materials (1870-1990), from various sources (900 different ones), depending on the singular situation of each exhibition space, in particular its history, topography, location, …

Journées photographiques de Bienne 2024 F&D Cartier "La Chambre Bleue"

ln an era in which artificial and sensationalist photographic content is proliferating, F&D Cartier continue to put at the center of their practice the fundamental elements of analogue photography: light and a photosensi­tive surface. Their site·specific installation has been created using vintage silver photo paper dating from the 1880s to 1990. The sheets are placed on the walls of the exhibition space in a precise arrangement: when they are exposed to the ambient llght, the silver compounds undergo a chemical reaction, and the white surfaces of the photo paper gradually darken into monochrome variations according to the particular formulas used by their manufacturers. F&D Cartier brlng us back to the very etymology of the word •photography'- litterally, •writing with light."

Cartier Daniel