Jacques Garnier To Speak On His Work At Laguna Art Museum

LAGUNA BEACH—Jacques Garnier will speak about his photographic art in-person July 29 at 6 p.m. at Laguna Art Museum. His latest images are featured in “Hymns to the Silence,” an exhibition on display throughout the summer.

Viewers may immediately recognize the small bits of Southern California buildings that Garnier features in his latest black-and-white photographs, particularly those details captured from structures at UC Irvine that have served as sci-fi film sets. The sharp angles and sweeping curves Garnier highlights are packed with energy and movement.

But it’s the black part of the black-and-white images that truly fascinate.

This negative space takes on geometric shapes or invites the viewer to a meditative place. No longer relegated to the background, the black in Garnier’s B&W photos have a presence all their own.

This aesthetic idea in theater-making circles is often called the presence of absence. It’s what’s left unsaid in poetry or resides in the silence between notes in music. It’s what’s expressed when the dancer’s foot is in the air, not the steps themselves.

The notion takes center stage in Garnier's high-contrast photographs with poetic titles, such as “Adrift” pictured above.

Winner of the 15th Annual B&W Spider Awards in Architecture for 2021, Garnier embraces the Japanese concept of Ma to describe this quality. In the “Hymns to the Silence” catalog, the artist states:

“If you throw all the influences that drive my current work into one large series using architecture as a metaphorical base, you will find yourself immersed in ‘Hymns to the Silence.’ Love of negative space, Ma, abstractions, black and white, less is more, reductivism, the silence between the notes, energy filled with possibilities, tension …”

There was nothing reductivist in the scale of another B&W print that Garnier created in collaboration with five other photographers, including Laguna Beach’s BC Space co-founders Jerry Burchfield and Mark Chamberlain. For the Legacy Project, the six transformed the old El Toro Marine Base hangar number 115 into the largest pinhole camera ever to take the largest photograph ever—both still hold the Guinness world records.

The gelatin silver halide print measures 31 feet high and 107 feet wide. To develop the behemoth, a tray larger than an Olympic-sized pool was built requiring 1,800 gallons of chemicals. Hoses powered by fire hydrants washed it all off, and the "Great Picture" was completed in 2006.

The project utilized the oldest of photography’s materials and methods, but digital reproductions of the "Great Picture" have speedily traveled the world a million times over.

The six collaborators have produced more than 150,000 other images in documenting the base's still slow transition from abandoned military outpost to Great Park. In looking back at Garnier's photos of the base, it's easy to see his love of capturing architectural forms.

It should be well worth a listen to hear Garnier describe how his process has evolved to reach “Hymns of the Silence.”