Delphine Balley – Paysage de sel, pierre et ombres, 2021 ; Cérémonie, le vase, 2021 ; Cérémonie, les kakis, 2021 ; Cérémonie, l’image, 2021

Delphine Balley uses family, friends and people from her village as models and actors to tell photo and video stories that explore our relationship with reality and faith. Working with a large-format film camera, she has adopted the techniques of 19th-century illusionists to create a “little theatre of the world” in carefully devised mises-en-scène. Her use of chiaroscuro to conceal and reveal details allows the artist to explore a strange, unfamiliar and sometimes disturbing world.

The photos from Delphine Balley’s series Figures de cire were taken with a view camera. They transform the banalities of everyday life into dreamlike fables. Inspired by the traditional genres of art history — still lifes and landscapes — her photograph Landscape of salt, stone and shadows engages with funeral rites and the symbolic uses of salt and stones. Her work offers a reflection on metamorphosis and disappearance, just as the vanities were intended to remind us of the ephemeral and fleeting nature of existence.