Exposition de Maciej Markowicz, Huit Seconde - Galerie XII

The year 2026 marks the 200th anniversary of the invention of photography. On this occasion, Galerie XII is delighted to present the work of Polish artist Maciej Markowicz. Maciej Markowicz photographs from inside a vehicle transformed into a camera obscura. No film, no negative to enlarge. The chromogenic paper is exposed directly for eight seconds and yields a unique paper negative, which can neither be reprinted, nor duplicated, nor remade. What the paper records is not an instant but a duration. For eight seconds the lens remains open over the Seine and the chamber moves through the city — water, light, traffic, weather pass onto the paper. Not a frozen instant, but a span of time held in a single object. The bridges are those from which Gustave Le Gray and Édouard Baldus worked in the 1850s, both painters before becoming photographers. Baldus photographed Paris to record its buildings before Haussmann tore them down. Markowicz photographs the same crossings to capture something less solid: the eight seconds themselves. For this exhibition, Markowicz fitted a lens to the gallery window overlooking the courtyard of Village Saint-Paul. The courtyard appears there live and reversed, in the window itself — passers-by, light, weather, in motion and in real time. The visitor stands inside the instrument that made the works surrounding them. On the walls, the same city immobilized for eight seconds; in the window, the same city that never ceases arriving and disappearing. The difference between the two is the subject of the exhibition. The exhibition will include one more image, which no one in the gallery will see. The Road to Vincennes — a single eight-second exposure, held in eight sealed cassettes, sold closed and opened for the first time by the purchaser — is in preparation, and would be presented on the back wall of the darkened room. A separate sheet accompanies this release. The exhibition is supported by the Polish Institute and the Rezo agency

This exhibition is part of the Photography in Art Galleries trail, organized by the Comité Professionnel des Galeries d'Art.