Laurence Aëgerter’s works combine appropriation, translation and poetic displacement to question the signifying power of images that unconsciously precede, follow, surround and overtake us. She investigates our realities through the prism of the human sciences, history, art history, psychology, neurology, and iconography. “Les Cathédrales” series (2014) is based on a book from the 1950s, Cathédrales et églises de France. The artist photographs one of the included images of the Gothic cathedral of Bourges in her studio through a precise protocol: every minute for two hours, Aëgerter captures the movement of the sun and the shadows cast by the windows, gradually obscuring the image until it becomes invisible. The series of 126 shots, also published as an artist’s book, engages the viewer in an exercise of contemplation and patience. “Les Cathédrales hermétiques” (2016-19) builds on the series. Aëgerter focuses on interiors, from the Romanesque cathedral of Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire to the Gothic cathedral of Coutances, to the more modern Sainte-Jeanne-d’Arc in Nice and the three Provençal sisters of Cistercian architecture: Sénanque, Silcacane and Le Thoronet. Printed and silk-screened with a thermo-reactive ink, the images are revealed in contact with the sun’s rays. The heat penetrates the material to better reveal it: the darkroom exists in broad daylight. In this tribute to Claude Monet’s majestic Cathedrals series, whose thirty motifs painted between 1892 and 1893 offer a highly plastic experience of light, Aëgerter draws on the history of art and architecture, as well as that of photographic technique. The perception of time is apprehended through a living experience of light and matter, where the fleetingness of the present moment confronts the immutability of the past.

In the 1990s, Aëgerter obtained two doctorates in art history. In 2005 she graduated from Gerrit Rietveld Academy in visual arts. Since then, her work has been exhibited at Les
Rencontres d’Arles, La BNF, Guggenheim Bilbao, Musée du Petit Palais, Museum van de Geest in Haarlem, and others. She is a laureate of the Rencontre d’Arles Book award, the national photography commission by CNAP and the Ministry of Culture, and other prizes. Her work is held in the collections of MoMA, the Getty Research Institute, the New York Public Library, the BnF, the CNAP, the Photography Museum in Rotterdam and others. Aëgerter is preparing a 2025 exhibition as part of the photography Carte Blanche at France’s Centre des Monuments Nationaux.

Founded in 2010, Galerie Binome (Le Marais, Paris) is dedicated to contemporary photography. Its program of exhibitions and international fairs features established and emerging contemporary artists exploring the conceptual and formal boundaries of the medium. In search of new forms in photography, and interested in experimentation with the materiality and media of the image, the selection of works establishes dialogues with sculpture and drawing, or with traditional materials such as ceramics and textiles. The definition and expansion of the photographic field are at the heart of the gallery’s reflections. Member of the Comité professionnel des galeries d’art, Galerie Binome develops numerous collaborations with personalities from the world of art and photography, curators, private and public institutions. In 2023, its director Valérie Cazin was appointed to the Paris Photo selection committee.