The Photography & Sciences Prize will allow Manon Lanjouère to continue her cycle of artistic and plastic research, thus offering us a poetic look at the pollution that intrinsically modifies our oceans.

Eight million tonnes of plastic are dumped into the ocean every year, and at this rate, without any real action on our part, the amount of plastic in the ocean is expected to triple by 2050.According to the UN, there would be more plastic waste in the sea than fish. The plastics, whichbreak down into smaller and smaller particles, form microplastics, which due to their very small size, slip through the nets and unfortunately cannot be retrieved. We are facing a frenzy of activity of underwater life being suffocated by plastic, a new «vegetation» of nightmares.

The Particles will then enter the immobile layer of the waters, to lift the shroud over the invisible beings, and to plunge the spectator into an abyss of reflection.
With the creative image, I offer a new form to the destroyed world of tomorrow by reinventing its structure: plastic materials become the new representative form of microbiomes and plankton. Through the game of mimesis, I replace the real and anticipate a future through a projective image.

This sort of apocalyptic prophecy shows a sublimated seascape, deliberately too soft, tooartificial, «nowhere does fresh nature breathe» (G. Bachelard). Like water splashed on the face, The Particles wishes to awaken this energy of seeing, transforming the gaze into a clear and easy action leading to a real awareness.

Manon Lanjouère 

The series is be the subject of a round table with projection at the ADAGP (Paris) on the 12th of september 2023 à 6.30 p.m., then an exhibition in a reference place dedicated to photography in France, Stimultania Pôle de photographie in Strasbourg (cumulative exhibition of Richard Pak, winner #2021 and Manon Lanjouère, winner #2022, from April 28 to September 17, 2023).