muriel bordier's digital collages depict surreal + satirical swimming lessons

muriel bordier’s digital collages depict surreal + satirical swimming lessons
all images courtesy of muriel bordier

photographer and video artist muriel bordier approaches the subjects of her digital photographic collages with a healthy dose of wit. her compositions offer an amusing look at the everyday world around us, imagining landscapes that could only exist in a funny, fictional reality. for the series ‘les thermes’ (the spas), bordier chooses swimming lessons as the theme, and toys with the viewer’s perception of possibility — bathers are led to an indoor pool on chair lift-like contraptions; figures line up to jump off a diving board; a single worker fills an enormous empty abyss.

‘in my photographs, I try to cast an amused and satirical eye on the world,’ bordier says. ‘I choose elements that are part of our collective memory, our society’s cultural codes, objects, monuments, landscapes, people. I juxtapose, stage and photograph these elements, playing on the difference the image generates and the spectator’s representation. there is no master plan, I don’t tell the spectator what to think; I simply provide an elaborate composition that allows the eye to travel, create its own hierarchy of aspects, and awaken perception.’