Marguerite Bornhauser

In the text about her recent solo exhibition at Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Simon Baker has stated that “Bornhauser’s work is compelling not because, like some latter-day stylist, she creates her own, mannered, chromatic world, but because, instead, like Hammett’s "Continental Op", she does the hard work of observation, assembling fragments of the world until they add up to something more than the sum of their parts. In Red Harvest the coloured details could be considered as purely incidental, atmospheric asides in the pursuit of a greater immersive fiction. But in "Moisson Rouge" the sunshot bodies, too-bright waters, burning skies and broken shadows do something quite different. Rather than proposing a false reality in which we can lose ourselves, they take us away from life as it is lived, or at least, as we ordinarily experience it on the surface, leading us deep into an ever-present, super-saturated alternate truth. And, as with the fictional blossoming red tie in "Red Harvest", the colours here are never purely or merely symbolic, signifying anything specific or narrowly defined. Instead, colour itself signifies, in its presence and appearance, variety and intensity, organization and disposition, that here we are in an original world, and seeing it differently.” Simon Baker, Director, MEP in Red Harvest, Published by Poursuite, 2019