Lavinia: this Italian-sounding name of Latin origin evokes, on its own, a poetic world, filled with the scents of citrus and honey. With this series, FLORE takes us on a journey reminiscent of a Grand Tour through Italy, much like the one undertaken by Romantic artists of the 19th century. The technique she uses—the soft focus, the grain of the images, their coloration reminiscent of autochromes—all contributes to a sense of travel through time.

As always in FLORE’s work, each of her series is rooted in a part of herself, as if it were connected to a greater, older story—as if she had inherited the memories of others and sought to make them come alive for us. Once again, there is something deeply personal here: while clearing out her aunt’s house, she discovered a bundle of letters—traces of a long friendship between her aunt and an Italian woman named Lavinia.

Haunted by this correspondence, FLORE has been journeying through Italy for the past ten years. Les rêveries de Lavinia is both an inner and initiatory voyage, leading us from the Amalfi Coast to Sicily, through Florence, Rome, Naples, Milan, Turin, Venice, and Lake Maggiore. Steeped in melancholy and suspended in time, the photographs awaken the imagination, telling the timeless story of a passionate love, composed of wanderings through Renaissance palaces and their gardens. Classical sculptures embody lovers, while the journey is punctuated by luminous landscapes and delicate still lifes.

These perspectives, conducive to introspection, are heightened by the sensual details of gestures and emotions frozen in marble, awakening all our senses: we feel the smoothness of stone, the coolness of the Aqua Alta, the sweetness of grapes, and the scent of lemon; we hear the birdsong and the rustle of linen; we sense the caress of a hand and the warmth of the sun on a summer morning.

Each photograph sets the aesthetic of the sublime against emotion, in the grand tradition of Romantic art. And as if to broaden the spectrum of sensations, the materials used vary: stone and silk sometimes replace paper, creating a coherent whole where elements follow, echo, and interlock like pieces of a puzzle. Altogether, they form a story made up of fleeting yet eternal moments, which the photographer captures and offers us as one offers their heart. — Emmanuelle de L’Ecotais

A French-Spanish photographic artist, FLORE was born in 1963. She currently lives and works between her two studios, in Paris and in the Hauts-de-France region.

Winner of the 2018 Marc Ladreit de Lacharrière Photography Award in partnership with the Académie des Beaux-Arts, FLORE works over long periods, often while traveling. Her work has been acquired and exhibited by several institutions, including the Petit Palais Museum, the Bibliothèque nationale de France, the MMP+ in Marrakech, and the Rivesaltes Memorial.

Through refined technical interventions in the darkroom—an alchemist in her own right—FLORE both shapes and reveals the world as it unfolds before her eyes, creating unique images that drift away from conventional photographic reality and form a seamless fusion between substance and form.

She thus questions the photographic medium itself, moving effortlessly between the oldest processes—such as platinum-palladium or cyanotype—and the most contemporary techniques, sometimes combining them, or physically altering her prints with wax, gold, or pigments. FLORE is deeply committed to a search for memory, creating images that attempt to restore truth in the place of a reality that is slowly fading.

Far from nostalgia, her work—tinged with melancholy—challenges the status of the image in our contemporary societies, offering instead an alternative to the world's turmoil by inviting the viewer to step into her poetic universe.