On the art of stillness

A morning with photographer Ines Marot, between the studio and the sea.

Ines Marot photographs slowly. Her camera, a 1962 Rolleiflex, holds twelve frames per roll, and she rarely finishes a roll in a single day.

The part that survives the waiting

‘The picture,’ she tells me, ‘is the part that survives the waiting.’ We are sitting in her studio above the harbour. The light is the kind of pale northern light that painters used to leave their cities to find.

She works in series, never single images. A subject — a doorway, a hand, the particular grey of a Tuesday — will return to her work for years, gathering small variations.

Two photographs

By the end of the morning she has taken exactly two photographs. She seems content with this. ‘Two is more than yesterday,’ she says.