The large-format photographs by Marina Gadonneix show natural phenomena such as avalanches, lightning, meteorites and auroras as simulations. In her series “Phenomena“, photographed over a long period of time in experimental laboratories, the tradition and aesthetics of landscape photography merge with the scientific document. Although all the pictures were taken in spaces specially designed for scientific experiments, it is the real world that Marina Gadonneix is interested in.
The laboratories she works in are places of representation, modelling and abstraction of physical processes; highly controlled environments and devices and constructions that create and scale natural events. These are what Marina Gadonneix focuses on in her exploration of the wonder of these phenomena.
It seems appropriate that Marina Gadonneix uses photography, a medium at the intersection of reality and fiction, to address the paradox of the representation of reality; the simultaneous measurement and control of what we see in the real world.