Capturing the Spirit of Invention: Philippe Tarbouriech, Photographer

"Do you know there are said to be five times more lawyers than engineers in the U.S.?" photographer Philippe Tarbouriech asks with a rhetorical flourish as he shows his latest photographs of inventors.

The pictures, taken during his recent travels in South East Asia, are captivating. But Philippe Tarbouriech’s interest in photographing inventors and innovators is fuelled by more than purely aesthetic considerations. Fascinated by all aspects of technological innovation, and with patented inventions to his own name, he is concerned that too many people, especially young girls, simply cannot envisage themselves as inventors. "The image has got somehow warped," he explains in an interview during an exhibition of his photographs at WIPO in April. "There is a social need to show more good role models of inventors. My dream is that kids will look at my photos of inventors and think: ‘Hey, I could be like that!’"

It is not just the owners of patents or of successfully commercialized innovations who attract Philippe Tarbouriech’s attention. His photographs include children and adults, scientists in Silicon Valley and grass roots entrepreneurs in developing countries. What he seeks to capture on camera is the essence, the spirit that pushes a person to invent.

Many of his images portray inventiveness at its simplest expression. "What makes someone invent? It’s basically about refusing to accept that something is not possible," he says. He points to a photograph of two children on the skeleton of a bicycle, wobbling down a street in their Lahu hill village in northern Thailand. "Just look at these two. Their bicycle has no chain and no tires. They’ve got no shoes. It shouldn’t be possible to ride it. But they’ve found a way to do it. That’s inventiveness.

"Or this," he continues, indicating the figure of a small girl from Cambodia’s Tonlé Sap lake, who beams up at the camera from a basin which serves as her boat. "She knows nothing about the laws of physics. But she’s solved a technical problem. She’s discovered that by creating a vortex in front of the bucket with her paddle she can make it move forwards instead of just spinning round."

Communicating a passion

Whether his subjects are children at play or scientists in their laboratories, what matters to Philippe Tarbouriech is that his photographs succeed in communicating the passionate interest of individuals in...