lara tabet works with bacteria to produce living images at BMW’s arles exhibition

Tomas Kauer - News Writer and News Moderator

lara tabet works with bacteria to produce living images at BMW’s arles exhibition

LARA TABET LETS BACTERIA SHAPE THE PHOTOGRAPHIC IMAGE

Light glows through sheets of glass, casting saturated reds, blues and amber tones across the medieval stone walls inside the Cloître Saint-Trophime, housing the latest works by Lebanese artist and medical biologist Lara Tabet, created with curator Yasmine Chemali for Le corps vitré (Vitreous Body), on view during this year’s BMW exhibition at Rencontres d’Arles.

From a distance, the installation recalls stained-glass windows. Up close, the images begin to dissolve into branching bacterial colonies, softened color fields, and fine networks that seem to spread beneath the surface. They look geological, microscopic and painterly all at once. None of them was made with a camera.

Every panel begins with water collected across Marseille. Rivers, canals, fountains, estuaries and roadside puddles all become sampling sites, each carrying its own microbial communities. ‘I create the conditions,’ Tabet says. ‘Then the living organisms draw.’

all images ©designboom, unless stated otherwise

BACTERIOGRAPHY: WHEN THE LABORATORY BECOMES THE DARKROOM

The process begins in Lara Tabet’s laboratory, where she collects water samples and then places them inside Petri dishes. There, bacterial communities are allowed to grow. Once developed, the artist transfers them onto unexposed color photographic film. Because the film is already coated with gelatin, the microorganisms begin feeding on its surface, gradually dissolving the color emulsions beneath, a process that exposes unexpected combinations of reds, blues, yellows, and blacks. Tabet calls the process bacteriography. ‘It’s a photographic language made by and through bacteria,’ she explains.

The technique grew naturally from Tabet’s background in chemical pathology. Growing microorganisms on gelatin-based media forms part of everyday practice, making photographic film a surprisingly familiar material. Looking at photographic film through the same lens, she realized the material could become an environment where microscopic life leaves its own trace.

The artist never knows exactly what the final image will look like. She chooses where to collect the water, prepares the cultures, and develops the process, but nothing is added to the film after that point. It’s the bacteria that continue the process, each sample developing differently depending on the microbial communities present in the water. ‘Virgin film allows the emergence of shapes that are not controlled by the human hand or the human realm,’ she shares. ‘This is, I think, what is 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

BMW’s exhibition features A BIOLOGICAL PORTRAIT OF MARSEILLE

In Le corps vitré (Vitreous Body), BMW’s exhibition at Rencontres d’Arles, every sample is displayed alongside its location and a bacteriological analysis identifying microorganisms commonly used to assess water quality, including indicators such as E. coli. Those laboratory results sit behind the glass, offering another way of reading the work. ‘I’m a scientist,’ Lara Tabet highlights. ‘I’m not doing data visualization.’

One image contains dense black passages where bacteria consumed much more of the film after a sample was taken near a sewer collector rich in organic matter. Others remain lighter, revealing delicate veils of color. Weather, rainfall, seasonal changes, and the microbial communities present on the day of collection all influence the outcome. As an ensemble, the works become what Tabet describes as ‘a biological cartography of Marseille during February 2026’, a snapshot of the city’s microbial life at a particular moment in time.

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

Préfecture (détail), Bactériographie, impression UV sur verre, 2026 ©Lara Tabet / BMW ART MAKERS (04/2026)

GLASS, GELATIN, AND THE HISTORY OF PHOTOGRAPHY

Glass appears everywhere in Le corps vitré. It carries the photographs but also connects the different worlds that contribute to the project. It nods to microscope slides used to observe living organisms, the glass plates that marked photography’s early history and the 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 body is the transparent 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,’ she says of the work, ‘maybe you connect it with painting or other things first. Maybe with painting, with all other things; maybe not with photography.’ Seen from a distance, the glowing panels resemble stained-glass windows more readily than photographic prints. Stepping closer, the colors give way to branching bacterial growth, dissolved patches of photographic emulsion, and fine organic patterns left by the microorganisms.

Le corps vitré is on view during this year’s BMW exhibition at Rencontres d’Arles

LIGHT ACTIVATES THE WORK at Rencontres d’Arles

Those references continue into the scenography of the exhibition, developed with curator Yasmine Chemali. The installation borrows from the language of stained glass and illuminates each panel from behind, leading light to travel through the work.‘We wanted to combine the biological imaginary, the stained-glass imaginary and the history of photography,’ Tabet points out.

Chemali arranges the exhibition as a gradual sequence through Marseille’s waters. Individual samples accompany the route through the cloister before opening onto the monumental work at the end. Glass panels stand like vertical markers, and as audiences move through the cloister, the images brighten and darken depending on where they stand. The work departs from everything that comes before it, as it remains biologically active throughout the exhibition. ‘This work is completely different because it is more a live work,’ Tabet adds. ‘It’s not stabilized.’

Instead of glass alone, the surface is made from agar-based bioplastic infused with nutrients for bacteria alongside photographic emulsions. Cyanotype produces deep blues, liquid photographic emulsion introduces pink tones, while silver chloride and chromogenic bacteriological media generate ochres and subtle color shifts as bacterial colonies continue developing across the surface.

For Tabet, the piece brings together the exhibition’s central ideas in a single material. Different bacteriological media change color depending on the microorganisms developing inside them. ‘It represents all the waters,’ she comments. ‘We call it the vitreous body.’

the piece brings together the exhibition’s central ideas in a single material

MAKING MICROSCOPIC LIFE VISIBLE

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

She traces that thinking to posthuman feminist writers such as Donna Haraway and to hydrofeminism, which understands bodies as porous. The photographs follow the same logic. Water moves through Marseille carrying bacteria, pollutants, nutrients and human activity without clear boundaries between them. The images that are created on the film are shaped by those entanglements and not by a single author or species.

Tabet’s work begins with bacteria, but it is ultimately about coexistence. Water becomes the thread connecting human activity with the countless forms of microscopic life already inhabiting the same environment. Samples are collected from Marseille’s waterways, yet the images don’t distinguish between what belongs to the city and what belongs to nature. Human traces, microorganisms, infrastructure, and environmental change remain inseparable, all carried by the same bodies of water.

Bacteria here leave color, texture, and form behind. Every image carries traces of their activity, making it impossible to separate the artist’s decisions from those of the microorganisms themselves. Laboratory protocols, photographic materials and the living communities already present in Marseille’s waterways, all affect equally the result that we perceive on the glass panels.

‘It’s important to make visible the life that runs around us, especially microscopic life. We share the environment with them. Our bodies are made of bacteria. We are entangled,’ the artist concludes.

Sources de l’Huveaune, Bactériographie, impression UV sur verre, 2026 ©Lara Tabet / BMW ART MAKERS (04/2026)