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The first monograph to explore Jan Groover’s entire body of highly original work

Published on occasion of the same-titled exhibition at the Musée de l’Elysée in Lausanne, the catalogue “Laboratory of Forms” is the first publication to explore Jan Groover’s entire body of work – not only from her years in New York but also her lesser known period in France. Based on the entire collection of Groover’s work (gifted to the museum by her husband Bruce Boise), “Laboratory of Forms” traces her career in many images, essays and commentary texts.

Originally trained as a painter, Groover (1943–2012) turned towards photography in the 1970s and developed a highly original, distinct style as a combination of both disciplines. While known especially for her meticulously composed photographic still-lifes, Groover’s interests also include portraiture, landscapes, city shots and many other genres.

“Wishing to get back to the very essence of the relationship of tings to one another, Jan Groover managed to generate a photographic world unto itself, a laboratory of forms in which, with rare skill, ‘ideas are inextricably intertwined with aesthetic sensations.’ Described as a ‘photo-world anomaly,’ Jan Groover wrote a decisive page in the history of photography, producing a body of work whose originality, quality and regularity commanded, and still command, attention.”
― From Tatyana Franck’s introductory text

The book includes a chronology, a selective bibliography, and essays by Tatyana Franck, Sarah Hermanson Meister, Emilie Delcambre Hirsch, Paul Maynes Tolosa, Paul Freches, and Groover’s husband Bruce Boice (“Jan and me”).