Jungles

In JUNGLES, the viewer is submerged in images of a lush, tropical forest. Yet the strange beauty of these landscapes is deceptive: through her way of photographing, Olivia Lavergne presents a completely transformed, fictional rainforest. In her photographs the landscapes fall prey to her experiments, in which she uses strong flashes and studio lights – she takes suitcases full of them on her travels – to probe the forest with light. Illusion and reality become entwined, the first may even become more believable than the second. By making the contrasts stronger than they really are and using colours traditional to landscape painting, she explores an area while simultaneously subjecting it to a metamorphosis.