I have been nourished by images since before I can remember

Introduction

The Taj Mahal shimmers in the sunshine of Uttar Pradesh; Notre Dame vibrates in resonance with the City of Lights; Saint Basil’s Cathedral flickers like flame rising from Red Square. Corinne Vionnet’s images animate their subjects in a subtle and beguiling way. The eye dances across the visual plain, hither and thither, to the gentle urging of a flurry of lines and tones that draw us to recognition of the subject, but modestly decline to be stripped back to the bare essentials of information.

The energy in these images is akin to that created by the sketcher’s hand busily darting about the page making many small, light lines that build to a defining set of curves and forms. A coming into being in which the image resolves slowly from many flashes of perception and arcs of the pencil. It is an approach distinct from that of the merely representational. The aim of the sketcher is to find within the form of a thing, some hint as to its essence. In the work of Corinne Vionnet that essence arises not in the lived world of individual experience, but in the recall of prototypes already long embedded in the collective imagination. The recognition of a place because it looks like the pictures we have all seen of it. An image with a preordained perspective, a required way in which it is to be observed and, importantly, recorded anew – each copy proving the authenticity of an experience by its very nature as facsimile. A pictorial déjà vu.

While these artworks have an impressionistic feel they do not arise from the visual sensibility of an individual’s direct response to place. Quite the opposite. Their soft tracery captures the phantom iconographies that haunt the hyperspace of mass mediation. They speak not to the mindfulness of personal immersion in the here and now, but to a slotting of the world into the pre-packaged patterns long laid down by commercialised recreational travel.

Corinne Vionnet’s images are created from many layers, each of which came into being because of a powerful, if unresolved, response to a place and its a priori pictorial prototype. Her practice is to synthesis from these images something new: to seek the spirit of a place, not as a record of a physical structure, but as the trace of a collective consciousness that stands astride the real and the virtual.

Alasdair Foster

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Interview

When did you begin to make photographs?

I was thirty-five. The decision was rather spontaneous. But I have been nourished by images since before I can remember. Growing up in my family home, there were lots of books about various countries, also maps, art books – all quite classic examples from that period. My father took a lot of photographs and my mother collected postcards. (As a child, I also collected postcards well into my teenage years.)

At the time, I engaged with the illustrations in these books and with the postcards, on a purely emotional level. As a family, we didn’t travel very far so perhaps these images allowed me to travel in my imagination and to dream. They shaped my way of seeing and subsequently my reasoning. Much later, there were books that influenced me in other ways, leading me towards photography as a medium for my artmaking. I can recall two in particular: Jean Baudrillard’s ‘America’ and the photography book ‘Once’ by Wim Wenders.

[Left] © Corinne Vionnet ‘Pisa’ 2006 from the series ‘Photo Opportunities’ 2005–present
[Right] © Corinne Vionnet ‘Athína’ 2006 from the series ‘Photo Opportunities’ 2005–present

How did ‘Photo Opportunities’ begin?

The idea came to me in 2005. My husband and I were spending a long weekend in Pisa and during our stay we went to see – of course – the Leaning Tower. It was in May and there were already a lot of tourists there. Many were photographing the tower from the park, as was I. This location had two advantages: it gave the best view from which to see the angle of the tower, and there was enough space to allow one to step back and photograph the building in its entirety. That was why everyone chose it. During the hour we were there, I began to wonder if the plethora of pictures people were taking all looked just the same. And then, because there were already many digital cameras in 2005, it set me wondering if I could find similar images on the internet. Once back home, I went online to check. I searched using words such as ‘Pisa’ and ‘leaning tower’. The result was a myriad snapshots of the Leaning Tower. It made a big impression on me: not just this great number of images but also their astonishing consistency.

Since then, with the continuing rise of social media and the smartphone, the sheer quantity of images has become all the more remarkable, even disturbing. Places have become Instagrammable and selfies are now an integral part of our daily lives. (Figures published in 2019 reported that ninety million selfies were posted on the internet every day.) What I also began to notice, looking at some of the tourist sites in Paris, is that visitors’ interactions with the monuments and with their environment is primarily through the screen of their smartphone – that is, with an image of the place. The image has come to precede the real.

[Left] © Corinne Vionnet ‘Agrā’ 2006 from the series ‘Photo Opportunities’ 2005–present
[Right] © Corinne Vionnet ‘Běijīng’ 2007 from the series ‘Photo Opportunities’ 2005–present

Could you talk me through the process involved in creating one of these images.

I begin by viewing thousands of shots posted on the internet, each of which shows the same place. From this I want to understand which orientation of the landmark is most consistently depicted. I collect different images of this one subject – in the daytime, at night, with different skies, during different seasons, taken by different people in different parts of the world – which I then layer together in the computer, aligning them to a single focal point. Each image is translucent so that one can see parts of some of the other images beneath – it’s a puzzle… In total there are around a hundred images, one on top of the other.

Of course, the selection of photographs from the internet and their subsequent layering influences the final image. In the process, moments merge, people meet, skies are formed, stories are created. I don’t work systematically, but rather I use the internet shots as a palette from which to create these impressionistic images. Each is a personal interpretation, very much arising from my own individual relationship to images.

[Left] © Corinne Vionnet ‘Stonehenge’ 2007 from the series ‘Photo Opportunities’ 2005–present
[Right] © Corinne Vionnet ‘Fujisan’ 2007 from the series ‘Photo Opportunities’ 2005–present

How do you decide which subjects to choose?

When I began, I based my choice of locations on tourism statistics. At the same time, I analysed travel-agency brochures to get a sense of which images are used iconically to symbolise a particular destination.

Today, I also use websites that seek to inspire the viewer to travel, recommending the best places to visit in a city with language such as: 10 Must-See Places, Best Spots to Visit, Top-Rated Destinations… (My recent series created for the Fine Art Museum of Bilbao was mostly based on that concept.) Of course, I also continue to explore images made by tourists themselves.

What ideas or concerns do you want to bring out in this work?

The three series we are discussing here – ‘Photo Opportunities’, ‘Scenic Views’, and ‘Paris, Paris, Paris’ – attempt to speak about our collective imaginary and the influence of images on our gaze. By bringing this multitude of shots of the same place together in a single image, I am trying to raise questions about what it is that motivates us to take photographs of places we have been, and about our experience as tourists. Photographs are omnipresence, their consumption incessant – my hope is that the artworks in these series ask us to consider the influence of images on our very perception.

It’s not that I am especially enamoured with digital manipulation. What sparked my interest in working this way were my concerns about the ubiquity of tourist photos today and the tourism industry more generally. I’m also concerned by the over-use of photography, by the weakening and fragility of images. Back in the early 1980s [the French philosopher and sociologist] Jean Baudrillard warned that in an age of mass communication, images would become “weightless” circulating “in an uninterrupted circuit without reference or circumference”. He described a situation where images of the world become unhitched from the real and instead simply refer back to other images. Forty years on, we can see this is indeed what is happening.

How did ‘Scenic Views’ begin?

Since I was a child I had been dreaming about these famous views of American landscapes. Places I knew through films and books. And, after working on all those world-famous monuments for the ‘Photo Opportunities’ series, it seemed to me obvious that I should then focus on these American scenic views.

The notion we have of these landscapes has long been shaped by the photographs we see of them. For example, I didn’t visit Monument Valley until 2019. Nonetheless, I had a precise notion of the place – or at least of the place that absolutely had to be seen (and photographed). That image was part of my visual memory long before I visited the place for the first time. And, in Monument Valley’s visitor centre, there is a platform from which one can take in this exact iconic view. The platform even has a sign indicating that this is Photographers Point: the precise vantage from which famous photographers have previously recorded the scene. Indeed, all of these sites have long had their ‘scenic observation’ points and ‘grand view’ markers, so that each tourist may align their camera with the pioneer photographer who established the prototype image they now seek to replicate to prove they too were there. Indeed, those early photographs played an important role in the promotion and preservation of these sites, imbuing them with a specific identity, even for those who had not themselves ever been there. In a similar way, the early photographs by Carleton E. Watkins were an important influence in the decision by Congress to create the Yosemite National Park.

[Left] © Corinne Vionnet ‘Yosemite #06’ 2019 from the series ‘Scenic Views’ 2014–present
[Right] © Corinne Vionnet ‘Yosemite #02’ 2014 from the series ‘Scenic Views’ 2014–present

What is it, do you think, that draws us to look at (and want to photograph) images of landscape?

I think there are different reasons. In my day, movies influenced us enormously, as did postcards and advertisements. Today, movies and advertisements are certainly still a major influence and, of course, the internet. We have travel websites, influencers, GPS to guide us… and Google has even integrated the various points from which to photograph famous scenes into its maps, marking each with a camera icon.

The development of tourism has led to the construction of roads and infrastructure further facilitating access to these established viewpoints, and increased tourism has in turn promoted even greater awareness of these places. We used to have these Scenic Route maps that showed the most efficient way to travel from one of these incredible places to the next. For me, the advantage of these maps was that you might take a wrong turning and, as a result, discover something new – something you had not already seen in a photograph.

[Left] © Corinne Vionnet ‘#03’ 2014 from the series ‘Paris Paris Paris’ 2007–present
[Right] © Corinne Vionnet ‘#07’ 2021 from the series ‘Paris Paris Paris’ 2007–present

Tell me about your latest series (just published as a book), ‘Paris Paris Paris’.

This project came about naturally. Knowing that Paris is one of the most visited cities in the world, I began by concentrating on all the well-known monuments. My image of the Eiffel Tower dates back to the beginning of the ‘Photo Opportunities’ series, to which I have added the Louvre Pyramid, Sacré Cœur, Notre-Dame… I’ve also included a few landscapes that, for me, form part of the city tour: views along the Seine, the public gardens…

In this Paris work, you have included two series that expand on the relationship between tourism and the iconic nature of certain famous views of the city. What do you seek to bring out in these new images and how were they created?

These two series were originally conceived during the process of developing the book. Nicolas Polli, the graphic designer, was convinced that we needed to provide the viewer with ‘keys’ to the work – ways to peel back the imagery and ideas to understand the underlying concepts. His first idea was to create a kind of lexicon of the individual images that made up a given whole. Together, we came up with the idea of taking a composite image and stripping it back by removing successive image layers. I chose an image of the city with Sacré Cœur in the distance – such a static view, but one that, all the same, moves slightly from one image layer to the next. These images set up a rhythm that spans the extent of the book becoming at once simpler and less distinct as each translucent image layer is peeled back.

[Left] © Corinne Vionnet ‘#05-04’ from the series ‘Been There…’ 2024
[Right] © Corinne Vionnet ‘#07-02’ from the series ‘Been There…’ 2024

The other new series is my commentary on mass tourism. It counterpoints the images made by tourists with images of tourists. This work grew out of a discussion about the ways one might interpret the act of superimposition. The idea was to intervene when the book was actually on the press by printing two different images onto the same page in register, creating a layered result. For my part, I had two desires: to reflect upon the overabundance of tourism in a straightforward way without specifically addressing its consequences, and to highlight the way in which tourists use photography to testify ‘I saw this, I was there’. So, I went to the Champs de Mars, the Trocadero, the Arc de Triomphe, the Louvre, and so on, photographing the way in which people interact with places through taking pictures. Smartphones have changed our behaviour enormously in recent years. Our snapshots are becoming increasingly scripted, and I have the feeling that our relationship with reality is becoming lost in the virtual.

How do you see these ideas developing in the future?

I’ll continue to work with images in this way as long as they remain for me as magical, fascinating and, at the same time, disturbing as they do now… As long as they raise questions. However, my increasing preoccupation with the climate catastrophe may come to direct my work along a different path…

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Her monographs include ‘Photo Opportunities’ (Kehrer Verlag 2011), ‘ME. Here Now’ (Fall Line Press 2017), ‘Souvenirs d’un Glacier’ (RRose Editions 2019), and ‘Paris, Paris, Paris’ (Rvb Books 2024). She has also self-published a number of artist’s books, copies of which are now held in the collections of, in Switzerland, the Fotomuseum (Winterthur) and the Bibliothèque d’art et d’archéologie (Geneva); in Spain, Museo Reina Sofía (Madrid) and MACBA (Barcelona); and, in the USA, MoMA (New York City), Whitney Museum (New York City), and New York Public Library. In 2011, the European public-service TV channel Arte featured Corinne Vionnet’s imagery in their documentary ‘Photo – Les Appropriationnistes’. And in 2013, she was invited to the World Economic Forum in Davos to present her work as part of the conference Seeing is Believing. She lives and works in Switzerland.

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This interview is a Talking Pictures original.

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