Refuge: Lara Gasparotto

Refuge is the sixth book by Lara Gasparotto and spans four years of daily photographic practice, in the artist's immediate environment but also much further away, as far as Guyana, via Quebec and Louisiana. More than a practice, it is rather a way of looking at the world that drives Lara Gasparotto. A world of outdoors, of flora, fauna, rain, sun, lakes, trees, and her family. Gasparotto spent a winter and a spring working on the selection of the book. In the end, Refuge delivers a subtle narration without chapters, without page numbers, and where the rhythm is changing. On the cover is an illustration by her sister Lissa Gasparotto and inside a poetic text by Eva Mancuso. The 200 images are a little more than strictly photography: intuitive and nourished by painting, Gasparotto seeks with pastel, gouache, sometimes even oil, tenuous elements of her photos that she modifies, enhances, underlines and then rephotographs to finally, very subtly, move the image from the mechanical and the chemical to the fleeting expressiveness of the living. AUTHOR: Belgian photographer Lara Gasparotto (°1989) has been active for over 10 years at Stieglitz19 gallery in Antwerp. Lara Gasparotto has developped an intimate universe capturing moments of sweetness and melancholia. Like memories turning into dreams, the narrative of her pictures comes to life through the atmosphere coming out of the relation between light and silence. We read her pictures like we remember the seasons: the place and time do not really matter, moments become memories according to the way it affects us. Lara Gasparotto comes close to people and captures special moments with speed but also with gentleness. SELLING POINTS: . Contemporary photography meets mixed-media . Female photographer capturing her daily surroundings with a poetic and timeless sensibility . Front cover illustration by the photographer's sister Lissa Gasparotto . Lara Gasparotto respresents the new wave of Belgian photography since 2010 200 colour illustrations