In this talk, I'll briefly go over some of the strategies I use when developing my works before introducing two recent pieces related to Nicéphore Niépce's invention of photography in 1826, of which France will celebrate the bicentennial next year.
These pieces, acquired by the Centre Pompidou in Paris, are not photographs. They were developed based on research into the history of this unusual inventor and the materials he used in the heliography process when he produced the very first image in the history of photography, Le point de vue du Gras. This research has been linked to other optical and chemical phenomena that fall within the realm of scientific wonder, in order to bring the viewer not only into the presence of a work and an inventor, but also into the representation of an experience.

Isabelle Le Minh is a multidisciplinary French artist based in Paris who teaches at the Haute Ecole des Arts du Rhin in Strasbourg. Her work has been exhibited in museums, art centres and festivals both in Europe and Canada. She is the recipient of the MAD-ADAGP Artist’s Book Award 2016 and was a resident at Villa Kujoyama (French Institute) in 2019 and Villa Saigon in 2023. She is represented by Galerie Christophe Gaillard in Paris.
After studying engineering, Isabelle Le Minh began her career in patents in Berlin before enrolling at the École Nationale Supérieure de la Photographie in Arles, from which she graduated. In the early 2000s, the digital revolution led her to reconsider her practice and make a shift: no longer using photography as a means for representing the world but thinking about photography through a broader artistic practice. Since then, her work has questioned photography, reactivating its history, techniques, and theories. Through processes of appropriation, displacement, and the deconstruction of images, objects, or concepts from different fields, she creates multifaceted and polysemic works, sometimes tinged with humour, in a reflective, conceptual, and sensual vein.

Failogram

Aura