Artistic approach
Laurent Millet’s photographs are hybrid works that connect with the physical world through different media such as sculpture, drawing and installations. They are timeless and experiment with a range of techniques including printing, ambrotype, salted paper, cyanotype, the gelatine silver process and, more recently, gum bichromate. The artist’s research focusses on the act of creating images and, by extension, the production of the imaginary. His work explores narration and more formal aspects connected with architecture and questions the artist’s place in the creative process.
Laurent Millet discovered the vertiginous walls of foliage in the dense rainforests covering the rugged Indonesian peaks during a residency in the country. Awed by its profusion, density, luxuriance and verticality and struck by the sense of being embraced and rejected all at the same time, the photographer transcribed his experience through the Hespérides series — presented at Chaumont-sur-Loire — upon returning to France.
The Garden of the Hesperides is a mythological garden on the western edge of the ancient world. It is reserved for the gods, forbidden to humans and guarded by the Hesperides, nymphs of sunset and light who tend the garden and protect its treasures, particularly its golden apples. For Laurent Millet, the ideal image is never less than a garden, an out-of-reach, framed representation of beauty that constantly reminds us it that it is always elsewhere: beneath the surface, behind the wall, beyond the reflection, in time.
Laurent Millet makes his prints using a 19th-century photographic printing process called gum bichromate, using successive layers of gum arabic and blue and gold pigments. His works testify to his taste for the gilded and embossed papers produced in Germany in the 18th century, which evoked exoticism, ornamentation, multiplicity and popular imagery through stylized plant, animal and human representations. These printed works are themselves directly inspired by brocades and fabrics imported from the East, the “Indian-style” works that set new trends in adornment and interior decoration.
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES
Laurent Millet’s works are included in prominent collections in France (BnF, FNAC, MEP, etc.) and the USA (Los Angeles County Museum, MoMA de San Francisco, Chicago Art Institut, Museums of Fine Arts de Houston et de Santa Fe., etc.). In 2019, he joined Galerie Binome, which has presented two solo exhibitions, the first titled Un architecte comme les autres, in 2021, and the second titled Jardin d’après nature, in 2024.
Laurent Millet is represented by Galerie Binome, Paris.
