Event Horizon

Quentin Lacombe's Event Horizon takes its title from the boundary around a black hole beyond which no event can be observed, and builds a private cosmology out of photography, digital rendering and collage.

Full-bleed pictures of trees, animals, unidentifiable technology and houses lit in surreal night colour open the book, giving way gradually to two- and three-image collages that wrap around the edge of the page as the sequence pushes toward its own horizon line. Lacombe combined photograms, 3D renders and studio photographs to blur where documentary description ends and invented image begins. First self-published in 2016, the book was reissued in 2017 by the Paris publisher RVB Books as a 118-page softcover with a foldout poster dust jacket and Japanese binding, carrying 72 colour photographs and a short text by the artist.

Lacombe, born in France in 1990, trained first in architecture before completing a photography degree at ECAL in Lausanne; Event Horizon, his first book, was shortlisted for the Aperture–Paris Photo First PhotoBook Award and was later staged as an immersive installation in the group exhibition Transformer: A Rebirth of Wonder in London.