Issue 22: The Scale of Seeing

In-Conversation with Bénédicte Blondeau

From intimate rooms to geological time, her photographic vision unfolds

It was a true pleasure to sit down with Belgian photographer Bénédicte Blondeau and explore the arc of her practice—from the introspective self-portraits of Lieux intimes to the elemental sweep of her recent series Ondes. Over our conversation she reflected on the role of photography in negotiating self, nature, time and space, and how the medium itself remains an enigma: both record and suggestion, frame and beyond-frame.

Origins & Vision

Blondeau first encountered photography during her Master’s in Applied Communication in Brussels (completed 2010), where she explored audiovisual media within a communications framework. She explains that the photographic medium felt different: “It was more of an enigma… a challenge to really work with only one still image that can … evoke a feeling.” Over evening courses in Ghent and later the advanced course at Ar.Co in Lisbon (2016) she turned more decisively to photography as artistic expression.
Her work since then has centred on long-term projects, deeply tied to her life phases. As she describes:

Her earliest phases were strongly autobiographical, rooted in self-portraiture and the confines of intimate environments; gradually the frame widened—first to nature, then to geological scale. She views this not as progression in the sense of improvement, but as a shift in vantage: “I started more self-centred… and now I really don’t feel as a closed entity anymore.” The turning point, she says, came with her relocation from Belgium to Portugal, and then the arrival of motherhood—both experiences disrupting the self/other boundary.

Lieux intimes

In the early series Lieux intimes, Blondeau photographed intervening spaces—her house, corners of rooms, fragments of the body—resonant with introspection and vulnerability. These images are dark, self-referential, almost therapeutic: the camera as a way to make visible what couldn’t yet be named. She says: “My work is about perception — it is how I look at the world at a particular moment … the autobiographical aspect is inherent to my approach.”

In this series we see the camera as mirror: the subject may be absent or only partially present, but the faint trace of presence turns the house into a psyche-scape. The visceral intimacy of textiles, curtains, subdued light, body-fragments gives space to uncertainty, to the slow process of self-discovery.

Anesthesia

Moving from the fully intimate to a threshold state, the project Anesthesia explores liminality—“an in-between… between body and textures and environments,” as Blondeau explains. The images are muted, often monochrome or low-saturation, showing empty corridors, waiting rooms, slight human traces, soft textures echoing flesh or fabric.
The title itself is intriguingly paradoxical: anesthesia suggests numbness, absence of feeling—but these photographs invite the tactile, draw out subtle sensations. She clarifies:

In that sense, Anesthesia is where the self begins to dissolve into space, where the frame becomes porous. The environments become uncannily quiet—the body is implied, the presence faint, the viewer invited to dwell in suspension.
This series marks the first move beyond the strictly autobiographical towards terrain that hovers between interior and exterior, presence and absence.

Ce qu’il reste (What Remains)

With Ce qu’il reste, Blondeau shifts gear: the series juxtaposes human-made structures (ruins, architecture, transformation) with organic or aquatic life (jellyfish, geological formations) in order to reflect on scale and temporality. From her website:

For Blondeau, the move is one of perspective: rather than viewing the human from within, she places the human amid what preceded and what will remain. We see the shock of human fragility against the slow machinations of nature. She states:

“If you look on a bigger scale then it becomes one second.”

As the viewer, we inhabit a space where the “man-made” is not dominant but contingent, transient; where jellyfish and rock folds become metaphors for endurance and change. In this series the editing, the sequencing, and the liminal spaces between images all become part of the narrative.

Importantly the book form of Ce qu’il reste is central to her vision: the photographs escape exhibition ephemerality and invite repeated contemplation. urbanautica.com

Ondes (Waves)

Her latest major project, Ondes, digresses into energy, waves, the flows that animate life and matter. Inspired by a profound personal conjunction—the death of her father followed by her own pregnancy—Blondeau investigates “borders and entities of our being” via imagery of glaciers, volcanic territories, ultrasound recordings, drops of sea-water, biological forms. In her words:

In Ondes, the scale becomes radical: from microscopic drops to geological formations; from inner womb to outer world. The photographic frame is both intimacy and expanse. The book was published by XYZ Books and has received significant recognition, including a photobook prize at the Belfast Photo Festival 2025.

In this body of work, Blondeau doesn’t just cross thresholds—she collapses them. The interior/exterior, life/death, self/world distinctions fade into a continuum of waves and matter.

Publishing & Collaboration

Both Ce qu’il reste and Ondes bear the imprint of a deep editorial collaboration with XYZ Books. Blondeau reflects candidly on how the first book’s dummy version was thoroughly reworked after input from the editors:

The editing process became not a compromise but a clarification—from curating images, re-ordering, discovering stronger archival pictures, to refining the narrative. She emphasizes that now, for her second book, she arrived less with a fixed sequence and more with an appetite to build together from scratch—a flexibility born of experience.

Furthermore, she emphasises the significance of the book as object: format, paper, printing, binding—all of which affect how the work is encountered. “If people see thousands of books what will be the thing that makes their attention will go to your book?” she asks. For her, the form is part of the message.

The journey from self-publishing the dummy, to working with designer Joana Durães and editors Thiago Casanova & Pedro Guimarães, to the final object has been as much a part of the project’s meaning as the images themselves.

Photography in Public Space

Toward the end of our conversation I asked Blondeau to reflect on the place of photography in public spaces—the billboard, the mural, the outdoor screen—and its potential for cultural and civic expression.
She was cautious but optimistic. In an age of image-saturation, she argues, we have lost the ability to really look. She suggests that photographic works placed in public need to invite a slower mode of seeing:

In other words: while outdoor exhibitions are possible, they should avoid busyness, noise, distraction. For her contemplative photographs, a park, a courtyard or semi-enclosed outdoor space is more fitting than a busy urban thoroughfare. In terms of content she would not adjust the theme to fit the space, though she would adapt the format. For Blondeau the challenge is the same medium-paradox she has always embraced: using a still image to gesture toward the infinite, using the frame to dissolve boundaries rather than enforce them.

Looking Ahead

When asked what’s next, Blondeau remained open: video, sound-scapes, immersive installations all interest her—but only when they stay true to her photographic sensibility. The frame may shift, but so far the impulse remains: to translate perception, dilation, and the experience of being in a world that is more than we think.

Thank you again, Bénédicte—and thank you for your work, which encourages us all to slow down, expand our frame, and re-see the world.