Walking for five days in a row, on two occasions, through the famous funeral complex designed by Carlo Scarpa for the family of the industrialist Guiseppe Brion, founder of the firm Brionvega, Laurent Millet translates the effect that this architectural ensemble has on him, whose extraordinary capacity for expansion and tension towards the immaterial. The technique of gum bichromate makes it possible to evoke the granular texture of the concrete, its sculptural qualities, and to preserve the precision of the architectural design while erasing its details. This aesthetic choice was to prove very similar to the preparatory charcoal drawings made by Scarpa, which the photographer later discovered. This treatment with gum bichromate also underlines the reference to Adolphe Appia’s theatrical sets from the early days of modernity, which greatly inspired Carlo Scarpa, also a set designer.
Laurent Millet’s images thus bring this architecture back to the aesthetic references and issues that underlie it. There is a similarity between the gap created by Millet’s chosen distance from reality and the gap between Scarpa’s drawings and what was actually built; what prevails is an idea of architecture.