"Equilibrium and peace; these are the feelings that come to mind when one talks of landscapes. Nothing could be further from the truth in the work of Lemarchal, who visits the Atlantic coast, Northern Germany and Estonia in search of their history, and their wounds.
His work explores individual and collective memory, places marked by occupation, destruction and abandonment. His cold and silent photographs, extraordinarily majestic, speak of the marks by which time becomes visible - in other words, the form that time confers on the ruins caused by man, an attempt to exhume the spirit of each place.
The photographer's identification with the natural environment takes the form of a proposal to reflect around human intervention and man's industrial activities, inevitably at nature's expense.
This photographic work, aimed at raising the community's awareness of a deteriorating environment, explores, in a timely fashion, the question of our presence in the world. "For me, all these places become vast battlefields, where the past, present and the imaginary meet up in the mirror of humanity"
Commentary by Chantal Grande, 2008 artistic advisor for the Fondation HSBC pour la Photographie
Exhibitions
2008
Collective exhibition « Le temps du regard - Oeuvres a lecture lente, 1849-2008 - La contemplation active», Gallerie Michèle Chomette, Paris, France
2007
Collective exhibition « La photographie en apesanteur 1849 - 2007 », Galerie Michèle Chomette, Paris, France
Collective exhibition « La collection de Choisy-le-Roi » Ancien Hotel de Ville, Choisy-le Roi, France
Collective exhibition « Zones de Frictions, Glissements et Infiltrations 1949 - 2006 » Galerie Michèle Chomette, Paris, France
2006
Collective exhibition « Frictions, Traumas, Hantises 1850 - 2006 » Paris Photo, Galerie Michèle Chomette, Paris, France
2002
Personal exhibition of commissioned photographs, L'Onde, Centre Cultural de Velilzy Villacoublay, Ile-de-France, France
2001
Collective exhibition, Château de Sainte Colombe, Cote d'Or, France
