| Statement |
I photograph the world, just as I am drawn to extant photographs, images abandoned all too often by families or by society. Albums sold as lots on the web, old advertisements or objects related to the medium but now considered obsolete —these artefacts make up an archive that I draw on to interrogate our relation to photography. These men and women posing for the camera, to what degree do they reciprocate the social norms of success of their era? In the case of advertising, how do these images persuade us into becoming buyers? Photography’s entanglement with illusion leads me in turn to use the medium to reconfigure the real.
Like a child with Lego blocks, I cut up, paste and juxtapose images from different times and contexts, without one taking precedence over the other. I use photomontage, installation, photography and moving images mediated by different supports (paper, internet, video) to create little narrative scenes which viewers can complete as they wish. Abandoned pictures have the power to evoke many kinds of questions. What will remain of our families in the absence of the visual documents that attest to their existence? What strategies have multinationals dreamt up to sell us happiness? Little girls, puppies, mascots and couples, as well as phrases and slogans that activate the image are some of the leitmotifs I turn to give an account of our selves. I confront forgetting with recuperation, play and narrative sketches. This, especially considering how the proliferation of images is already raising an ecological question to which we have no answer.
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