Rebekka Deubner’s “Strip” at Les Douches la Galerie, Paris: Photograms of a Mother’s Wardrobe

There is no camera in this exhibition, and no lens between the artist and her subject. Rebekka Deubner: Strip at Les Douches la Galerie, Paris, opening on 13 November 2026 in the Marais, presents photograms — images made by laying objects directly on light-sensitive paper. The objects are garments from the wardrobe of the artist’s mother, Valérie, who died in 2018. What emerges are brilliant loops and bands of colour that carry an almost unbearable intimacy.

The photographer

Deubner was born in Munich in 1989 and lives and works in Bagnolet, just east of Paris. She studied art history and photography. Her artist page at the gallery reads like a map of the support system for emerging photography in France: the LE BAL / ADAGP prize, support from the Centre national des arts plastiques (CNAP), selection for the 38th festival at the Villa Noailles in Hyères in 2023, the FUTURES programme with the Centre photographique Rouen Normandie in 2024, a Transat residency at the Ateliers Médicis the same year, and a grant from the Institut pour la Photographie in 2025.

How Strip was made

The project began with loss. Sorting her mother’s belongings after her death, Deubner photographed a red garment that stood out from everything else. The lingerie from that wardrobe became the material of the series, made in 2022–2023. In the darkroom, she placed the fabrics directly on photosensitive paper and exposed them to light. Wherever cloth blocked the light, a shape remained; wherever it let light through — at worn, thin or lacy points — the paper registered a gradient.

The photogram is one of photography’s oldest techniques, used by early pioneers to record plants and lace, and later by avant-garde artists of the 1920s. Deubner uses it for a different purpose. Because there is no camera, there is no distance: the image is a direct record of contact between the object and the paper.

An imprint of an imprint

The exhibition text is by Julie Héraut, deputy director of LE BAL, the Paris institution devoted to the documentary image. She begins with a single orange-red photogram of a worn, irregular loop of fabric and builds outward. The technique, she explains, gives the artist direct contact with her material and reduces each textile’s form and texture to lines and masses.

Two things make the series quietly devastating. The first is colour: the prints are in vivid reds, blues and greens, and Héraut notes how sharply this brightness contrasts with the grief that produced them. The second is time. The garments still hold the traces of having been worn, so each photogram is a trace of a trace. Héraut’s phrase for it is “an imprint of the imprint left by Valérie.” Works in the series carry simple numbers — Strip #02, #21, #61, #101 — as if to keep sentiment at arm’s length while the images themselves do the opposite.

Les Douches and the Paris photography calendar

Les Douches la Galerie is a Paris gallery dedicated to photography, and its rue Chapon space sits in the northern Marais among a dense cluster of galleries. The timing is apt: Strip opens in November, the month when the Paris Photo fair draws collectors, curators and publishers to the city. A camera-less, deeply personal series by a young photographer offers a counterpoint to the large-format and archival work that often dominates that week.

Why it matters for collectors and photographers

For collectors, photograms have a property that most photographs lack: each one is unique. There is no negative to print from, so every sheet is a singular object made by direct contact. Combined with Deubner’s record of prizes and institutional support, that makes Strip an interesting entry point into emerging photography in France.

For photographers and painters alike, the series is a reminder of how much can be said without a camera. The decisions are compositional — placement, overlap, exposure time — and they are close to the decisions a painter makes when arranging shapes on a ground. The brightness of the results also shows that a subject rooted in mourning does not have to look sombre.

Visiting information

Les Douches la Galerie, 54 rue Chapon, 75003 Paris. 13 November 2026 – 17 January 2027. Open Wednesday–Saturday 2pm–7pm, or by appointment; free entry. Opening reception details: check with the gallery. Tel. +33 (0)9 61 48 92 34, [email protected]. See the gallery’s exhibition page, our Rebekka Deubner Paris listing, and more openings on Upcoming Art Exhibitions in Leading Galleries.