During the last lockdown, I found myself thinking about my artistic career,
the uncertainty since the beginning of the pandemic, and the good and bad aspects that there are generally in the art fields.
If someone have told me 20 years ago that I’d become an artist, I’d have simply laughed. Me ? Artist ? No way ! I became interested in photography very late. It started when I was in high school and before that, my interest in art was very limited. My first memory of art was when my parents took me to an art museum. I was…
While studying photography’s history, I came across articles about post-mortem photography. It’s a kind of photography that I’ve always found strange, weird. Before explaining my thoughts, let’s talk about post-mortem photography’s history.
Photography was born in 1839 (but it’s unofficially much older than that). In 1839, thanks to Arago in particular, the daguerreotype became known troughout the whole world. Although the exposure time was quite long, photographic portraits began to appear. It’s also at this time that post-mortem photography (= memento mori photo) appeared. A post-mortem photography is, as you probably know, a portrait of a deceased person. It is…
**SPOILER ALERT**
I usually can tell whether I liked a film or not.
But “Malcolm & Marie”, Sam Levinson’s new film, is one of those films that left me confused. Because I liked it and I didn’t like it at the same time.
I’m not going to lie : what made me want to watch it (at first) is the aesthetics of black and white. As soon as I saw the trailer, I found it beautiful. The contrasts seemed striking, and the shots really intriguing. I rarely watch black and white films, and when I do, it’s often old films…
I started using social media sites over ten years ago.
Like many people, I started with Facebook, then Twitter,
followed by Instagram.
At the beginning, I was really oversharing my life.
In other words I used to post a lot of uninteresting things.
As the years went by, I realized that these things had to remain ‘private’.
And I started to use social networks mainly for my work
and the causes I was/I’m fighting for.
But in recent years I’ve begun to observe things that have fascinated and saddened me at the same time. It took me a long time…
Seven years ago, the 4th january 2014 to be precise, I was assaulted.
At that time, I was working on a photographic series for which I was taking pictures of myself each day, in order to create a real-fake every day life.
On the 4th january 2014, I wasn’t really inspired. During some shopping I had taken a photograph that wasn’t really good. So I’d told myself that I was going to take an other photo, in a street, on my way back home.
And that’s what I’ve done.
On my way back, I felt, deep down, that something was…
It’s december, the month in which many of us review the past year.
Here, in this article, I’ve chosen to share my artistic favourites of 2020. Everything I enjoyed, everything I was moved by.
I encourage you to do the same on your side. You’ll see that’s it’s always less depressing than a year’s review (especially for this year !)
> Warning : There’re a lot of spoilers in this article !
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TV shows :
I watch a lot of series. I’m a netflix addict and except “Riverdale”,
I’ve finished every show I started to watch. …
I started photography when I was in high school, in 2006–2007, and between the photos of my dog and the ones of my bedroom, I took many many self-portraits. There are two reasons for this : - I really didn’t know how to use a camera at that time, I was just trying things without knowing if it was “ok according to the photographic rules”. For example, I remember really well how I used to enjoy the amount of noise on my photos…Well you can really see that I didn’t know anything about photography and because of that, I didn’t…
A few weeks ago, I went on holiday to Normandy for a couple of days.
In this crazy year, I needed a break even if it was a short one.
I only left for 4 days but I’ve been incredibly creative and have taken a lot of photographs.
I‘ve been very stimulated by what I’ve seen.
It wasn’t the first time, and I had already vaguely talked about my “holiday” photographs in a previous article, but this time it was even more intense.
And it made me think about my work and my use of photography as an artist.
Months go by and we all begin, regardless of our professions, to see the impact of the Covid on them. What it will change for a totally indefinite period of time.
As an artist (and a freelancer too), I’m used to living a life full of uncertainties, changes and false hopes. As artists and freelancers, we don’t always know what our tomorrows will be made of, even though fortunately, we sometimes know for sure that certain projects will see the light of day.
But the Covid has turned everything upside down,
it has destabilized us even more. …
There are a lot of spoilers in this article.
Talking about “The Affair” in one of my last articles, made me want to talk about a movie I saw again during the lockdown : “Shame” by Steve McQueen. It’s a movie that I’d watched in the cinema in 2011 and which quickly made it into my top 5 favorite movies.
First of all by the way the story is presented: one would think that the story of a man with sexual addictions would be shown in a vulgar and overly provocative way. And no, it’s the opposite. Steve McQueen did…
Pauline Le Pichon
French visual artist
