© Marguerite Bornhauser

Red Harvest

Marguerite Bornhauser

2019 — Paris, France

About this series

This series, by French photographer Marguerite Bornhauser, was inspired by Red Harvest, a novel by the pioneering American detective author Dashiell Hammett. The artist presents a selection of photographs which, when seen together, are the starting points for enigmatic stories. The images conjure a world of summer skies, languid figures and dappled light, interrupted by clues of ‘something’ that might have happened.
Marguerite Bornhauser’s work combines what look like spontaneous scenes with carefully constructed compositions, blurring the boundaries between reality and fiction. By refusing to caption her images, she makes each photograph into the starting point for a deliberately subjective narrative. Her photographic language, characterised by vivid colours, implacable shadows and close-ups, offers a free interpretation of reality. 
“In Moisson Rouge (Red Harvest) the sunshot bodies, too-bright waters, burning skies and broken shadows do something quite different. Rather than proposing a false reality in which we can lose ourselves, they take us away from life as it is lived, or at least, as we ordinarily experience it on the surface, leading us deep into an ever-present, super-saturated alternate truth. And, as with the fictional blossoming red tie in Red Harvest, the colours here are never purely or merely symbolic, signifying anything specific or narrowly defined. Instead, colour itself signifies, in its presence and appearance, variety and intensity, organisation and disposition, that here we are in an original world, and seeing it differently” – Simon Baker, Director at MEP, Paris

 

© Marguerite Bornhauser
© Marguerite Bornhauser
© Marguerite Bornhauser
© Marguerite Bornhauser
© Marguerite Bornhauser
© Marguerite Bornhauser
© Marguerite Bornhauser
© Marguerite Bornhauser

Photographer: Marguerite Bonhauser
Nationality: French
Based in: Paris, France
Website: margueritebornhauser.com
Instagram: @margueritebornhauser

Marguerite Bornhauser was born in 1989 and lives and works in Paris. After studying literature and journalism at the Sorbonne in Paris, she joined the National School of Photography in Arles and graduated in 2015.
Her work has been shown in several places : her first solo show at the museum of European Photography in Paris (MEP) and Paris Photo in 2019, but also at Cincinnati for the Cincinnati Art museum, in Arles during the festival of Photography, in Deauville during the Festival Planches Contact, at Agnès B, in the festival MAP Toulouse, at the science museum in London, etc. Marguerite Bornhauser adds editorial work to her photographic research. Her first self published book, Plastic Colors, was selected among the finalists of the first book award of Mack books in 2015 and published in 2017. Her book «8» was published by Poursuite in 2018. In 2019 she published Red Harvest with the same publisher. She also collaborates with french and international magazines and newspapers as a photo reporter and portrait photographer as well as a fashion photographer for several brands and is represented by an agency in France and another one in England. She is represented by the French gallery Made and the Portuguese gallery Carlos Carvalho.