Other series state their objects; it is the case of SMASH, taken in 2000 at Babolat de Lyon plant, a tennis racket and strip plants. Large monochrome yellow horizontal or vertical stripes, all on surface, flow alongside pictures of coils taken in an accelerated perspective implying a sense of movement, agitation, dynamism. The arrangement of photographs imposes a rhythm, which is underlying in the other series, but becomes here even more obvious: we nearly hear the pounding murmur of unwinding nylon ropes. But while being highly official, this series takes thus a sociologic side. Just like the architectural photographs of Iseult Labote favour the workers’ output rather than the famous architects’ one, tennis is not seen from the point of view of the players who became famous, but from the perspective of the work carried out upstream, in the plants.

Extract from the text by Vanessa Morisset, Art Critic and Philosopher at Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris.

SMASH n°XIII, 2000
80 x 120 cm
C-print, diasec

URBANUS n°XIII, 1999
125 x 185 cm
C-print, diasec

SMASH n°I, 2000
80 x 120 cm
C-print, diasec