Eloïse Labarbe-Lafon:  American Album

Eloïse Labarbe-Lafon –  American Album

Cé Editions

Eloïse Labarbe-Lafon’s American Album traces a journey across the United States during a moment in which the idea of the American dream appears increasingly fragile. The work follows two protagonists travelling through shifting terrains, creating a portrait of restlessness and pursuit. Hotel rooms, roadside diners, suburban houses and sparse desert environments form a visual sequence that suggests both accumulation and instability. The images, often rendered with an almost compulsive attention to fleeting scenes, point to a desire to fix time at the very moment it slips away.

Labarbe-Lafon intervenes in the photographs with hand painted oil colour, a technique that heightens the tension between observation and invention. At times the colour adheres closely to the visible world, while in other moments it disrupts or reframes it, introducing a subtle sense of dissonance. This interplay reinforces the book’s central concerns: the uncertainty of place, the volatility of desire and the difficulty of holding on to a narrative that continually reshapes itself.

American Album positions this intimate journey within a broader consideration of contemporary America. The landscapes feel vivid yet slightly unreal, as if caught between familiarity and performance. The final result is a study of movement and longing, attentive to the moments just before something shifts.

208 pages
French and English
Published September 2025
Special edition of 20 with signed print