Augustin Lignier

In a quest to performatively exhaust himself, Augustin Lignier reaches for the unreachable. “Turning Point” is an project that is equal parts obsession with a single movement and a poetic commentary on the act of image-making—or perhaps on living a life (you choose). Working at the intersection of photography and performance, Lignier undertakes the seemingly simple task of jumping and turning across a circle, aiming to land perfectly at the camera’s shutter. His tedious search for the perfect shot — where the gaze is right, the body is aligned, and the heel hovers just above the ground — offers a curious take on the decisive moment but also serves a surprisingly simple and apt metaphor for liminality, a space of change. Whether a response to the world or a self-reflection, this series sends you on a ride from a good laugh to anxiety, and back. The 60 images in the book out of 6,000 taken stand as a testament to photography’s eternal promise to capture the ephemeral and a psychological portrait of our ever-pursuing, ever-unsatisfied human nature. And as if that were not enough, Lignier doesn’t stop there.