Marguerite Bornhauser
With a multidisciplinary background spanning literature, photojournalism, and visual art, Marguerite Bornhauser questions the status of the photographic image. Taken as a faithful reproduction of reality, photography is in fact a matter of viewpoint and construction, and it is within this gap that her work takes shape. Attentive to details, suspended moments and whatever escapes our gaze, she seeks what the ordinary reveals about the world. Painting on glass, engraving, photograms and installation restore the image’s material presence. Engaging with the ecological crisis and humanity’s place in the world, her work opens up other ways of looking, in which wonder becomes a form of attention.
InCadaqués Festival Residency Program 2026• SERIES •
Mirage
A mirage is an image without an object, an illusion born of light, which the camera can nonetheless record. Marguerite Bornhauser sees in it the very condition of photography : received as testimony, it always remains, in part, a vision. The series settles into this in-between, where the image no longer proves anything but awakens desire. During her residency in Cadaqués, she photographs the sea, the skies, the sun-struck shores, then lets the landscape work on the image : some films are developed in seawater. On glass, light passes through the works and sets down colour. The photogravures, a traditionally monochrome process, are printed on coloured papers that tint the image, or on gold, whose reflections make the image appear and disappear depending on the viewing angle, much like a mirage. Between the desire for escape and an awareness of its fragility, Mirage leaves a question open : is what we see here a memory, a dream or a world still within our reach ?
