Through this artistic documentary, Aude Le Barbey shines a spotlight on ‘the silent world’. She makes visible that which is unseen: confined & inaccessible research sites, abstract forms whose scales are hard to comprehend, and strange creatures, appearing mysterious and fascinating. With an outsider’s eye, she intrudes into the darkness ofthe laboratory and transforms the scientific into the aesthetic. Using this approach, she examines the idea ofperspective as she juxtaposes the gaze of the artist with that of the lab technician, and questions the impactof machines on our knowledge of the living world: how can we understand the invisible? How can weconvey what the naked eye can’t see? In this way, these images call into question our relationship with theland, the sea & the living world once we lose our points of reference. Fragmented, amplified, illuminated…these representations appear to us as unrecognizable, incomprehensible. Yet they come from our ownenvironment which somehow, suddenly seems very far removed from us. Bordering on science-fiction, thisphotographic project immerses us into a silent, unreachable space,floating weightlessly between the abyss and the depths of space. Aude le Barbey combines the wild with the scientific, in order to show how the microscopic can evoke the immense, the universal. Profoundly fascinated by the underwater world since childhood, she has produced an ode to the ocean, celebrating the richness of this impenetrable expanse whilst lamenting it’s alarming decline.

Text by Orlane Le Bouteiller

All images ©Aude Le Barbey