ArtNet

What matters is that moment, that briefest of instants, when light’s very alchemy transmutes a banal piece of tulle into a shimmering multicolored filter. Molten plastic, shattered glass, gift wrappings… all are desirable preys for her eye and camera lens, particularly as none survive onto the resulting print. What does count is that split second captured by eye and lens as colors, shapes and light totally sublimate matter.

With the sun as her only spotlight, eschewing both centering and retouching, Anne-Lise Calmes concentrates on the truth of the instant, focusing on the stark and simple reality of objects soon to be no more. So, where some may see nothing more than castoff scraps, she conjures up the underwater settings, sandy plains and embracing bodies of some dream world.

Metaphoric allusions naturally abound in her work but they convey no message, poetically distancing the object from its rendering. Blurring distinctions throughout, her sensual approach to her art enables Anne-Lise Calmes to inject in her prints both a sense of mystery and a measure of uncertainty.

Related in some ways to painting is Anne-Lise Calmes’ approach to photography, not least her use of colors and textures. A sculptural element can also be seen in the way chosen objects are shorn of their initial semantic identity and pared down to a given shape, matter or pigment. Deftly combined, material world and abstract universe transcend reality.

Anne-Lise Calmes’ prints consequently refrain from proclaiming their identity. What’s more, all the greater will be their poetic impact that no effort is made to decipher them. The fascination they exert stems in part precisely from their enigmatic character while the mystery they exude is the stuff of dreams. Art, after all, is not necessarily meant to be explained!

Her work in advertising, journalism and medical photography endowed her with the resources and experience to develop her own style and follow a creative approach that is hers alone. Often exhibited, her work is appreciated today far beyond the confines of Switzerland. Twenty of her original prints can be found in the collections of the Little Rock Museum in Arkansas.