DOUBLE ORBIT by Grégoire Pujade-Lauraine [SIGNED]

A collection of works by French photographer Grégoire Pujade-Lauraine. This book depicts a small world packed with incomprehensible symbols, secret passages, and buildings that seem haunted. The author’s photographs, taken while exploring the peripheries of major Western cities, closely examine the built environment where people live and which shapes their lives, bringing to light cryptic symbols etched into its surfaces or hidden in its shadows. The looming forms defy easy categorisation, and unsettling cyphers occasionally emerge from a lingering dusk: an oversized key, a black concrete moon, or the illusion of a limitless temple. At first glance, the images may seem to capture nothing more than the ordinary details of the urban environment, but viewed together, they form an endless allegory like a set of tarot cards, their meaning awakened only in combination. This book presents a strange world where inexplicable things emerge independently of the human will that carefully constructed it, and where the surfaces of familiar surroundings are hinted to be clung to by obscure secrets.

“While one by one the photographs seem to capture the mundanity of the overlooked urban environment, together they tell a story of how our buildings mirror, and shape, society” – ICON Magazine

“Pujade-Lauraine studies the built environment – searching for cryptic symbols to reveal open-ended allegories“ – Aesthetica

“Pujade-Lauraine continually points out the strange modernist structures that exist at every turn — minimalist sculpture and brutalist concrete swirl and surround” – photo-eye

Double Orbit invites us into a compact world of ambiguous signs, secret passages and seemingly haunted premises. Exploring the peripheries of large western metropolises, Grégoire Pujade-Lauraine's photographs study the built environments that harbour and shape human life, revealing the cryptic symbols etched across their surfaces and embedded in their shadows. The looming forms defy easy categorisation and disconcerting cyphers periodically emerge from a lingering dusk; an oversized key, a black concrete moon, or the illusion of a limitless temple. Pujade-Lauraine’s photographs depict the mundane details of the urban environment, yet when brought together read like a set of tarot cards – becoming open-ended allegories, their meaning awakened solely in combination. Double Orbit presents an elusive world, whose enigmas seem to emerge independently of the deliberate hands that built it, and which alludes to the oblique mysteries held on the surface of familiar surroundings.

“While one by one the photographs seem to capture the mundanity of the overlooked urban environment, together they tell a story of how our buildings mirror, and shape, society” – ICON Magazine

“Pujade-Lauraine studies the built environment – searching for cryptic symbols to reveal open-ended allegories“ – Aesthetica

“Pujade-Lauraine continually points out the strange modernist structures that exist at every turn — minimalist sculpture and brutalist concrete swirl and surround” – photo-eye