lara tabet allows bacteria to become image makers in rencontres d'arles

LARA TABET LET BACTERIA SHAPE THE PHOTOGRAPHY

Light shines through sheets of glass, casting saturated reds, blues and ambers on the medieval stone walls inside the Cloître Saint-Trophime, housing the most recent factory by Lebanese artist and medical biologist Lara Tabet, created with curator Yasmine Chemali for Le corps vitré (vitreous body), during this year’s BMW report at Meetings of Arles.

From a distance, the installation resembles stained glass windows. Up close, the images begin to dissolve into branching bacterial colonies, soft fields of color, and fine webs that appear to stretch beneath the surface. They look geological, microscopic and painterly all at once. None of this was done on camera.

Each painting begins with water collected throughout Marseille. Rivers, canals, fountains, estuaries and roadside puddles all become sampling points, each carrying their own microbial communities. “I create the conditions” The loss he says. “That’s when living organisms paint.”

all images ©designboom unless otherwise noted

BACTERIOGRAPHY: WHEN THE LABORATORY BECOME THE DARK TOM

The process begins in Lara Tabet’s lab, where she collects water samples and then places them in Petri dishes. There, bacterial communities are allowed to grow. Once developed, the artist transfers them to unexposed color photographic film. Because the film is already coated with gelatin, microorganisms begin to feed on its surface, gradually dissolving the color emulsions underneath, a process that exposes unexpected combinations of red, blue, yellow and black. Tabet calls the process bacteriography. “It’s a photographic language made by and through bacteria,” she explains.

The technique developed naturally from Tabet’s background in chemical pathology. The growth of microorganisms on gelatin-based media is part of everyday practice, making photographic film a surprisingly familiar material. Looking at photographic film through the same lens, he realized that the material could become an environment where microscopic life leaves its mark.

The artist never knows exactly what the final image will look like. He chooses where to collect the water, prepares the crops and develops the process, but nothing is added to the film after that point. It is the bacteria that continue the process, each sample grows differently depending on the microbial communities present in the water. “Virgin film allows the appearance of shapes beyond the control of the human hand or the human realm.” is shared. “That’s, I think, what’s perceived as spiritual, and for me it’s important because language is at the forefront of my thinking and many different worlds.”

Dense bacterial activity leaves intricate organic patterns

The BMW exhibition presents AN BIOLOGICAL PORTRAIT OF MARSEILLE

In Le corps vitré (vitreous body), BMW’s exhibit at the Rencontres d’Arles, each sample is presented along with its location and a bacteriological analysis that identifies microorganisms commonly used to assess water quality, including indicators such as E. coli. These laboratory results are behind glass, offering another way of reading the work. “I’m a scientist,” The highlights of Lara Tabet. “I don’t do data visualization.”

One image contains dense black passages where bacteria consumed much more of the film after sampling near a sewer collector rich in organic matter. Others remain lighter, revealing delicate veils of color. Weather, rainfall, seasonal changes and microbial communities present on the day of collection affect the result. As a whole, the works become what Tabet describes “biological cartography of Marseille in February 2026”, a snapshot of the city’s microbial life at a particular point in time.

The exhibition culminates in a monumental glass work inspired by Marseille’s relationship with water, which is placed like an altar. The piece brings together samples from the two historic rivers alongside the Canal de Marseille and the Canal de Provence, two engineered waterways that continue to provide drinking water today, echoing the nearby Palais Longchamp, built in the nineteenth century to celebrate the arrival of water after years of shortages.

Prefecture (detail), Bacteriography, UV print on glass, 2026 ©Lara Tabet / BMW ART MAKERS (04/2026)

GLASS, GELATIN AND THE HISTORY OF PHOTOGRAPHY

Glass appears everywhere in Le corps vitré. It conveys the photographs but also connects the different worlds that contribute to the work. It nods to microscope slides used to observe living organisms, glass plates that marked the early history of photography, and stained glass windows that have long used light to tell stories. “Glass was a medium in both disciplines,” the artist observes, referring to microbiology and photography.

The title follows the same line of thought. The vitreous is the clear gel that fills the eye, giving it its volume while allowing light to pass through it. Tabet borrows the term because it connects perception, gelatin and glass, materials that appear throughout the exhibition.

‘When you see this,’ says about the project, Maybe you associate it first with painting or other things. Perhaps with painting, with all other things; maybe not with the photo.’ From a distance, the glowing panels look more like stained glass than photographic prints. Coming closer, the colors give way to branching bacterial growth, disintegrated pieces of photographic emulsion and subtle organic patterns left by microorganisms.

The vitreous body is on display at this year’s BMW exhibition at the Rencontres d’Arles

LIGHT ACTIVATES THE WORK at Rencontres d’Arles

These references continue in the exhibition scenography, developed with curator Yasmine Chemali. The installation borrows from the language of stained glass and illuminates each panel from behind, guiding the light through the work.“We wanted to combine the biological imaginary, the stained glass imaginary and the history of photography,” Tabet points out.

Chemali organizes the exhibition as a gradual sequence in the waters of Marseille. Individual samples accompany the route through the monastery before opening into the monumental work at the end. The glass panels stand like vertical markers and as the audience moves through the monastery, the images lighten and darken depending on where they stand. The work departs from anything that comes before it, as it remains biologically active throughout the exhibition. “This play is completely different because it’s more of a live play.” The loss adds up. “It hasn’t stabilized.”

Instead of glass alone, the surface is made of an agar-based bioplastic infused with nutrients for bacteria along with photographic emulsions. Cyanotype produces deep blue, liquid photographic emulsion introduces pink tones, while silver chloride and chromogenic bacteriological media create ocher and subtle color changes as bacterial colonies continue to grow across the surface.

For Tabet, the piece brings together the exhibition’s central ideas into a single material. Different bacteriological media change color depending on the microorganisms growing in them. “Represents all waters” she comments. “We call it the vitreous.”

the piece gathers the central ideas of the exhibition into a single material

MAKING MICROSCOPIC LIFE VISIBLE

The work, according to Tabet, is also rooted in a feminist understanding of the body. It speaks of water, an environment shared by humans and countless other living organisms, each constantly influencing the others.

She traces this thinking to posthuman feminist writers such as Donna Haraway and to hydrofeminism, which conceives of bodies as porous. The photos follow in the same logic. Water moves through Marseille carrying bacteria, pollutants, nutrients and human activity without clear boundaries between them. The images created in the film are shaped by these anchors rather than by a single author or genre.

Tabet’s work starts with bacteria, but is ultimately about coexistence. Water becomes the thread that connects human activity to the countless forms of microscopic life that already inhabit the same environment. Samples are collected from the waterways of Marseille, but the images do not distinguish between what belongs to the city and what belongs to nature. Human footprints, micro-organisms, infrastructure and environmental changes remain inseparable, all carried by the same water bodies.

The bacteria here leave behind color, texture and form. Each image bears traces of their activity, making it impossible to separate the artist’s decisions from those of the microorganisms themselves. Laboratory protocols, photographic material and the living communities already present in the waterways of Marseille all equally influence the effect we perceive on the glass panels.

“It is important to make visible the life that runs around us, especially the microscopic life. We share the environment with them. Our body is made of bacteria. We are entangled” concludes the artist.