Karine Laval: Poolscapes

Poolscapes brings together two connected bodies of work — “The Pool” and “Poolscapes” — focused on the motif of the swimming pool and realized over the course of ten years. Presenting public pools in urban and natural environments throughout Europe and private pools in the US in two distinct sections, the book is arranged chronologically and shows an evolution in tone and depth, from the real to the imagined, from the photographic to the painterly.

Poolscapes opens with the “The Pool” series which invites us into a sun‑bleached public pool at midday, evocative of playful, mundane childhood memories and the universal experience of leisure and bathing. Gradually these geometric lines and familiar architectural structures with their social and descriptive references give way to the abstract, often blurred shapes and colors of the “Poolscapes” pictures that oscillate between representation and abstraction. Here the pool becomes a metaphor, a mirror whose surface reflects the surrounding world but is also a gate into a submerged realm where bathers are distorted and fragmented — “murky waters” that reveal the unconscious and darker connotations of the pool.

Laval's photographs rely on casual collisions and are at once vibrant, witty and spontaneous. Recording the world but transforming it at the same time, they find an extreme beauty in the banal and, by the same token, celebrate life and its more idle pleasures.