Assembled from both original and collected photographic objects, this project examines a consumer culture fascinated with marble as an aspirational material, historical signifier, and decorative commodity. The collaboration explores marble’s ubiquity from high to low art through tropes of kitsch, trompe-l'œil, and the uncanny.

Since antiquity, marble has been used as a stand-in for divinity, the body, and even light—the word itself is derived from the Greek verb marmairein (to shine, to flash). As photography is a medium that collects and records light, it is the ideal analogy for Eban and Gamber to explore marble and its various recreations.

Using a wide palette of photographic approaches, Marbre Vivant intersects the materiality of marble with photography’s unique power to emulate and commodify surfaces.