Figures gathers images built from details lifted out of the photographs reproduced across the twelve typological volumes Bernd and Hilla Becher published between 1977 and 2013. Known for their methodical inventories of industrial architecture, the Bechers' photographs occasionally let an almost invisible human presence show at the margins, silhouettes reduced to the scale of a detail and seemingly absorbed into the structures around them. By isolating, enlarging and redrawing these fragments, Gilles Pourtier shifts the gaze from object to subject: a posture, a wait, a gesture becomes central. Figures uncovers the discreet traces of human existence buried in that archive, offering a sensitive reading of a body of work where the human figure had seemed to vanish behind the forms of industry.