Marine Lanier – série Alchimia, 2025

Présage, 2025

Le Mage, 2025

Eclipse, 2025

Algues, 2025

Lune, 2025

Labyrinthe, 2025

Fougère, 2025

La Hottée du diable, 2025

With Alchimia, Marine Lanier searches for a “secret alphabet” shared by fossils, stars, landscapes and human figures. Taking its title from the pre-modern tradition of alchemy, the series draws on a worldview in which earthly and celestial phenomena were understood through systems of correspondence and transformation. It explores the ancient geology of Champagne, shaped by a vanished ocean whose marine fossils remain embedded in its chalk soils. Landscapes, insects, plants, astronomical archive images and portraits are drawn into these networks of association, allowing geological matter and cosmic phenomena to be read together. Printed on brushed aluminium in shades of gold, black and silver, the photographs retain a strong material presence, their metallic surfaces recalling the alchemical tradition from which the series takes its name.

Marine Lanier creates most of her photographic series in remote or difficult-to-access locations, such as shipwreck-marked islands, elevated gardens, or ancient volcanoes. Rooted in a longterm engagement with place and landscape, her work explores notions of metamorphosis and thresholds through images in which natural phenomena, botanical worlds and human presences converge.