Figures

Figures brings together a body of images derived from details extracted from the photographs reproduced in the twelve typological books published by Bernd and Hilla Becher between 1977 and 2013.

Renowned for their systematic inventory of industrial architecture, the Bechers’ photographs occasionally contain, at the margins of the frame, barely perceptible human presences. Reduced to fragments and considered at a different scale, these silhouettes appear almost absorbed by the structures that surround them.

Through a process of isolation, enlargement and redrawing, Gilles Pourtier shifts the focus from the architectural object towards the human subject. What might initially appear incidental becomes the central point of attention: a posture, an act of waiting, a gesture. Figures brings to the surface these subtle traces of human presence embedded within the archive, offering a more intimate reading of a body of work in which the human figure appears to have receded behind the monumental forms of industry.