Musée de la Photographie

Lux in tenebris is a combination of photography and videos that take the viewer on an unprecedented and intimate sea journey. The author, Vincent Jendly, embarked on board five merchant navy, cargo ships to challenge his ambivalent relationship with water, which he developed after having narrowly avoided drowning, when he was a child. Here, in the strange world of huge freight vessels, night is hostile: in the deepest darkness, when the sky is overcast and the ship completely disappears, nothing distinguishes it from the water, and the invisible sea becomes even more like an enormous chasm. During his first journey, when Jendly glimpsed an indistinct beam of light on the horizon, Jendly pictured himself as a child opening his eyes after his accident, in the dazzling light bathing his loved ones watching over him, and he saw life in death. The result of these journeys is a cathartic work, a challenge to darkness.

Vincent Jendly was born in Switzerland in 1969 and lives and works in Lausanne. Lux in tenebris is his latest personal work, produced between 2015 and 2020. It was presented for the first time during the international biennial Images Vevey in September 2020 and was shown, this summer 2021, at the Images Gibelline festival, in Sicily.

The photographs were taken using a medium-sized camera.