Tell me about Dads project. How did it start?
The project started in 2014, I already had a quite large collection of family photos gathered here and there from Ebay and yard sales and I decided to modify these images in order to give them a new life and a new purpose. Most of my work evolves around the idea of memory and I wanted to distort the memories these images represented to illustrate the impact of time on memory. Not really interested in working at random on the photos I focussed my idea on one character in particular: the dad.
The first volume is part of a triptych on the absence and role of the father, from our antique figures to the modern ways of the «daddy issues». How do you consider dad’s figure in the modern culture, and what’s the mother and woman roles?
Even thought the father figure evolved greatly I feel like its role remained the same. Actually I think the father figure evolved because the male figure evolved. We are allowing men to be more sensitive, a feature usually attached to the women, to the mother. There are more stay at home dads, single dads and the structure of families itself changed a lot. From homosexual parents, to single parents, recomposed families, adoption, atypical families with couples of three people for instance or relationship of surrogate mother / sperm donor. With this evolution, the classical structure of the family broke down and allowed a redistribution of the roles. That said, the role of the father is still very much attached to an idea of power and governance. This idea brings us back to antique institutions and will last forever I think. The word patriarch is commonly used to describe the father, and more precisely, the head of the family. As a tiny version of our societies, our families have ranks and determined roles. Then they can be endorsed, neglected or abandoned. I believe it is a worldwide generality that men are associated with power and women with sensitivity. But when it comes to an assigned role in the family, various countries happen to be of Matriarchal structures so there is no rule really. Regarding the chapter of the « daddy issues » it is a concept that I find quite fascinating especially because it has become such a « thing » in modern culture, and almost look like the follow up of the Oedipus complex. It became an excuse, a reason, a justification for women distress. As if the lack of father issue, HAD, with no exception, to have an impact on her future relationship with men and the way she perceives herself as a women. Once again, it is suggested that women cannot be fully accomplished without the presence of a male figure to help, shape, guide her.
The photos gives happiness and discomfort feelings at the same time. The faces are laughing but they are embraced by a faceless man. When you say “One might forget features of a face but remembers the loss or sentiment of emptiness”, which sentiments do you want to instill? Anger, regret, loneliness?
With this sentence I am discussing about the fact that memory fades away and one can forget
something that does exist, at the same time we can construct memories out of nothing, or modify them, and remember something that is abstract. I’d say that I would like to mostly illustrate an uncomfortable feeling, I want to viewer to have a strong sentiment of uneasiness. With this discomfort the viewer questions the role of the image and the whole purpose of the photo is challenged.
How much autobiographic is your project?
The topic is autobiographic but it is important to note that none of the pictures originally belonged to me. It is a gathering of images from various countries and eras which confines a universal aspect to the project. The lack of father figure is a very common situation, and by using different families stories I emphasize this fact. I could never have worked on my own family album, but that wasn’t even an option as I had no real material, hence the project on absence.
The series instills loneliness but also a silent strength to the rest of the family, to the sons. Do you think that re-invoking this absence through photography could be curative?
Absolutely. A few people came forward during shows or via email and told me that they had either lost their dads or never had one and that the project shook them very deeply because it was illustrating this void. The same way we sometimes put a word on an ache, I aimed to put an image on something immaterial.
In this series, it seems that inserting the photograph in a contest emphasizes the concept of memory. How did you choice the space, what is the relationship beteween the photo and the space?
Absolutely. A year after starting the project, I felt like I needed to give it an another layer and play further with the idea of distorted memory. I printed the pictures I had modified, framed them and placed them in stage settings in which I blended random objects I had found and personal belongings. This way I was muddling up the truth once more, in the content and the context. These pictures that had never existed in my past where brought to light in this artificial new reality questioning the place memory was taking in the process of acquiring my identity. The settings are something related to the picture and emphasize a sentiment, or on the contrary are random and very artificial. The viewer is wavering between pictures that could represent someone’s home and pictures that are completely absurd and ficticious.
In photography subtraction is an uncommon action compared to the widespread art of collage. In Dads, the absence theme brought you to adopting the subtraction as the main technique. What are your favourite one? How do you work on a photo?
Funnily enough I am actually very fond of collage and very much enjoy the accumulation of images creating a whole new one. It is indeed an uncommon practice as fewer artists consider the medium of photography as something that can be used backwards. Photography is the ultimate piece of evidence, and I find it really interesting to challenge this evidence and use it as a opposite stance.
In these photos absence is both physical and immaterial. In a contemporary world made by virtual relationship, the physical absence is increasingly usual and evident. What do you think about this “new way of human relationship”? Is there a connection with your project’s theme?
Though I can’t really say there is a direct connexion with this project I am absolutely fascinated by this topic. Our relationships indeed became more and more virtual and we reached a point where new technologies seem to divide us more than they unite us. But with this distance we tend to use photography to document our life, to fill a void. Families spread across the globe for instance show their loved ones through pictures, on a phone, on a wallet. What if you had no one and were to show a white screen or an empty scene? That would be extremely awkward and uncomfortable and I think that illustrate our deep fear of being alone, and the taboo there is around it.
You are founder and member of Livewild, an art collective gathering seven women from all over the globe. What’s the collective’s file rouge and what’s your personal contribution to it?
I am the founder and artistic director of the collective, so I manage the visual identity and the global curation of the group. I am also the spokesperson and handle most of the communication. Our main file rouge I’d say is our references and a shared goal to expand our individual practice through new medias and work as a whole as an exquisite cadaver. Many of our works can work in echo and we here and there communicate between works whether it is in the medium used or the topic chosen. The whole collective can be seen as a wide collage work, and we are working on a project of book in which we highlights these resonances between our works.