French-born Lauren Marsolier started taking photos when she was 12, but it was during her early twenties, while printing in the darkroom and finding she could control the final print, that her interest in photography was fully realised. “I liked the idea of actually making an image, not just taking it,” she comments.

For Marsolier, who’s been based in Los Angeles for the past three years, making photographs is the first step in her creative process. Her hyper-real images are shot in different places over the course of several months, then altered, layered and blended into seamless digital compositions. “I’m interested in how we perceive and define reality, and how today’s gigantic flow of images is changing the way we relate to the physical world,” she says. “I am fascinated by the mind and how to reflect subjective experiences in pictures.”

The photographs here are from Transition, a series which Marsolier began eight years ago in response to a number of what she describes as radical personal life changes. Including around 60 images, the project has been her main focus during this time. “I felt compelled to give a visual shape to my disoriented mental state,” says Marsolier. “The images don’t show an actual physical location. They are digitally composed, with elements from various photographs taken in Europe and the US.” Marsolier explains that her work deals with the disorientation and unsettling feelings that sometimes manifest themselves living in a fast-paced, ever-changing world. “Contemporary society is marked by change more than ever,” she says. “When we are psychologically affected by a new situation, there might be a period when we feel disconnected from what surrounds us; our perception of reality shifts and we can’t readily define our new relationship to the world. It is this mental state of confusion I explore in my work.”

Image © Lauren Marsolier.

Marsolier has exhibited her work in various locations across the US and in Europe, and has a solo exhibition opening on 23 February at the Robert Berman Gallery in LA. She is also working on a book that will bring together work from her eight-year project.

She was recommended to BJP by gallerist William Hunt, who says her work has “an intentional quality”, explaining: “They are sharply considered, good-looking landscapes of arid townscapes without signs, or signs of life. ‘Intentional’ is used here to indicate an otherness, a higher consciousness. What are these surreal places bathed in pleasant pink light? Why do car tracks mysteriously disappear? The photographs seem soundless too. We are visitors here, observers, pleasantly alienated.”

Visit www.laurenmarsolier.com.