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.