A pair of golf shoes; a piece of turf lifted from the course.
For Montréal photographer Véronique Lacharité and prop stylist Sarah Lamarche, these are things worth looking at.
Created for the second issue of hiatus golf, their photographic series Objects in play takes the everyday materials of the game into unfamiliar territory. Working in close-up, they draw out colours, shapes and textures that are easy to miss when there’s a shot to consider.
With no particular ties to golf, they let the objects lead.
“We’re both drawn to the same things: colours, shapes and textures,” they explain. “It’s the aesthetic qualities of what’s in front of us that spark the exploration. We pay very little attention to the objects’ actual function.”
An eye for detail
Sarah’s background in graphic design informs her sense of composition and approach to objects. As a prop stylist, she sources and arranges materials to give ideas physical form.
Véronique’s route to object photography began with her father’s camera, fashion shoots staged with friends and studies in visual and media arts. Her early work in portraiture still shapes the way she photographs things.
“I still often approach my images as portraits,” she says. “I love showing details, shapes and colours. Taking the time to reveal things we might otherwise overlook.”
In Objects in play, that attention reveals another side of familiar objects. At this scale, texture and form begin to take over, pushing the images towards abstraction.
“For us, details are what make something both beautiful and real,” they explain. “Macro photography allows us to reveal ordinary, everyday objects. We’re trying to find a balance somewhere between documentary and art. And when we get there, we enter the territory of poetry. That’s what we’re looking for.”
Working by feel
For Véronique, light has a physical presence of its own.
“I really see light as a character,” she explains. “I often imagine it as a material that interacts with the subject, touching it, brushing against it. I like it when I can see the texture, when I can imagine holding the object and feeling its surface and weight.”
The images take shape through an intuitive exchange. Sarah builds the composition, and Véronique explores it through the camera. They move closer, shift the angle and adjust the framing.
“It’s really the emotion a composition gives us that makes the decision,” Véronique says. “We work a lot on instinct. I think that’s a big part of why our collaboration works.”
Following that instinct, they find something compelling in objects that show their age. A pair of worn shoes became one of Véronique’s favourite subjects.
“I loved photographing the shoes, with their signs of wear and their white that wasn’t quite white anymore but was so much more interesting. They felt very real.”
Then there was the divot.
Sarah had imagined incorporating a displaced piece of turf into a larger arrangement. Instead, they stripped the composition back and photographed it on its own.
It became the cover of hiatus golf’s second issue.
“I never thought I’d make a magazine cover with a photograph of grass!” Véronique laughs.
Lifted from the course and seen up close, the divot holds so much of the game: a swing, an impact, a disruption in a carefully maintained surface.
Usually, we put it back and keep playing. Here, we linger.
