At the crossroads of image-making and performance, Tristan Lajarrige’s practice explores the responsibility associated with image production in a society where experience is increasingly mediated by photography. As online sharing encourages a tendency to photograph every meaningful experience, the artist’s work questions this impulse and its effects on our capacity to fully inhabit the present moment. In recent projects such as Pausing Piece (2024–2025), Grounding Piece (2023–2024), and Famous Tourist Attractions (2022–2023), Lajarrige develops performative strategies aimed at disrupting this compulsive and distracting relationship with the camera. Guided by prewritten instructions, these performances seek to divert and slow down the photographic act in order to refocus attention on lived experience, the body, and the natural environment.
By fixing the camera to a tripod and programming it to automatically capture images at regular intervals until its battery is exhausted, Lajarrige withdraws from the role of active image-maker, allowing him to cultivate a heightened sensory awareness. The duration of the performance thus becomes determined by the technical limitations of the device rather than by a series of artistic decisions. The resulting photographs, often presented as grids, diptychs, or sequences, become remnants of a temporal and environmental experience that unfolds beyond the images themselves. This reflection on ways of disarming the mechanisms of control inherent to image-making technologies serves as the starting point for a broader investigation into forms of photographic creation that are less extractive and more attentive to lived experience.
Tristan Lajarrige is a visual artist based between Los Angeles and Montréal | Tiohtià:ke | Mooniyang. At the intersection of image-making and performance, his practice explores how photography shapes agency, memory, and embodied experience. He holds a Master of Fine Arts from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University (2023) in Boston and a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Photography from Concordia University (2021) in Montréal. His work is included in the collections of the Royal Bank of Canada, Art Volt, Sid Lee, the Centre de services scolaire de Montréal, and the W. Van Alan Clark, Jr. Library. He has received numerous awards, including the Concordia University Alumni Association Fine Arts Award, the Tufts University Montague Travel Grant, and the Dean’s Research Award. In June 2026, he participated in a 3-week artist residency in Seyðisfjörður, Iceland, centered around walking. He is currently working as the Studio Manager of sculptor David Altmejd.
