For the Midi series, Marie Clerel has an appointment with the Sun. Every day at noon she exposes for the same amount of given time a sheet of UV-sensitized photo paper using the chemical of cyanotypes. In these daily gestures, each micro-variation of the material – the roughness of the paper, any manual application – resonates with the, also ever-changing, weather. Referring to the classical French form of the monthly calendar, each pieces is composed by 29, 30 or 31 cyanotype prints in shades of blue suggesting same as the sky, cloud cover, mist, plane trail or bright night. Taking distance with the classic relationship between a photograph and its reference, she invents a more radical mode of pictorial production, a very frugal one : always in a camera-less process and working only with natural light. Revisiting the primitive practices of photography, especially the cyanotype techniques, all variations of color and imperfection relate as much the manufacturing process of a photosensibility memory, as it authentic broadcasting. Mixing the rigor of conceptual thinking and her personal contingencies, her works offers itself as a media for mental images. And the viewer
is therefore surprised by the authenticity of the photographs thus created, and seduced by their poetic minimalism.