Katerina Jebb is a British contemporary artist whose work explores systems of classification, reproduction, and display, particularly within museums and archives. She is best known for her large-scale photographic works produced using flatbed and museum scanning technologies, which isolate and magnify objects from institutional collections, transforming them into highly detailed, monumental images. Jebb’s practice frequently engages with questions of authorship, originality, and the politics of representation. By employing scanning processes normally associated with documentation and conservation, she removes objects from their historical or cultural contexts and presents them as visual data, emphasizing surface, texture, and form.
[1]
Katerina Jebb, Eggs, 2013.
Technique
Katerina Jebb’s practice replaces the traditional camera with a high-resolution scanner to create life-sized, highly detailed images.[2] The digital scanner operates through a precise mechanical and optical sequence that converts a physical object into a high-resolution digital image. The trajectory of the scanner refers both to the physical movement of its internal components and to the path of light and data during the scanning process.[3]
"I watched her scan the intricately hand-stitched, Nile-blue silk corset worn by Marie Antoinette in 1793. She made 21 passes, 12 for the front, nine for the back. The result, after adjustment in Photoshop, revealed minute details. Such perceptible, nearly touchable, clarity isn’t possible with a lens camera, but is ideal for museums that want to display objects too fragile for even short-term exposure. That clarity convinced the conservators of this garment to allow her to scan it in the first place."
Jeff Rian, Crossing Eros, Deus Ex Machina, Katerina Jebb, Musée Réattu, Skira, 2016[4]
"In Jebb’s works, life overflows, immediately exceeds the frame the artist defines by means of the scanner through which she approaches, as closely as possible, the body of the woman posing. This woman is not a professional model; she is a friend, and it is from that intimacy that the nude emerges. From this bodily closeness—this body-to-body encounter—because Jebb herself is fully engaged in the pose. The effort does not rest entirely on the naked woman; the artist too must remain motionless, hold her breath, carry the scanner—several kilos—at arm’s length, one millimeter from the body around which she moves, holding the position for long seconds, then starting again, dozens and dozens of times."
Louise Chennevière, Katerina Jebb, Untitled Nudes, Semaine n.519, Immédiats, 2026
Katerina Jebb, Sharon Eyal, 2024.
Exhibitions
Museum Solo Exhibitions
Musée Réattu, Arles, France, Deus ex Machina, Retrospective, 2016-2017[5]
↑Dan Thawley (2 December 2011). "Simulacrum and Hyperbole". Vogue.it. Retrieved 5 September 2015.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: deprecated archival service (link)
↑Elena Bordignon (22 September 2010). "Tilda and the others". Vogue.it. Retrieved 5 September 2015.
