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Untitled (Dark Portrait of Emmanuelle Huynh)
1996
Isabelle Waternaux
Photography
100 x 83 cm
Print after Polaroid
“A portrait evokes, to paraphrase Bataille, ‘the freedom of a cloud filling the sky, forming and breaking up at an unhurried speed, drawing the power of invasion out of inconstancy and detachment’. It is the image of what a human being shows, of the interaction between his inner nature and the outside world. Making portraits compels the artist to be always on the move, to work without certitude. It involves confronting ‘somebody else’ and his or her singular experience of the world. Being face to face with this other person leads to a certain fascination: extreme detachment. A thread runs through these images; something indescribable circulates amongst mankind. We can sometimes experience a state of grace set free by our imagination, plunge into this part of us that seems to ignore time.”
Isabelle Waternaux, April 1997.
Text : Carole Vantroys.
Translation : Pamela Hargreaves.
“A portrait evokes, to paraphrase Bataille, ‘the freedom of a cloud filling the sky, forming and breaking up at an unhurried speed, drawing the power of invasion out of inconstancy and detachment’. It is the image of what a human being shows, of the interaction between his inner nature and the outside world. Making portraits compels the artist to be always on the move, to work without certitude. It involves confronting ‘somebody else’ and his or her singular experience of the world. Being face to face with this other person leads to a certain fascination: extreme detachment. A thread runs through these images; something indescribable circulates amongst mankind. We can sometimes experience a state of grace set free by our imagination, plunge into this part of us that seems to ignore time.”
Isabelle Waternaux, April 1997.
Text : Carole Vantroys.
Translation : Pamela Hargreaves.
Isabelle Waternaux
France
Born in 1957
Born 1957 in Marseilles.
Lives and works in Paris.
The titles of her series – Correspondances, Equivalences, Stillness – epitomize the themes of her work that constantly questions identity, time and mobility, and how they are represented. While faces and bodies form her core iconography, Isabelle Waternaux conveys the very essence of their vitality by confronting them with their own alterity or by capturing them in motion. From twin portraits with almost imperceptible differences to dancers photographed in action, hers is an aesthetic of instantaneity.
Text : Carole Vantroys.
Translation : Pamela Hargreaves.
Lives and works in Paris.
The titles of her series – Correspondances, Equivalences, Stillness – epitomize the themes of her work that constantly questions identity, time and mobility, and how they are represented. While faces and bodies form her core iconography, Isabelle Waternaux conveys the very essence of their vitality by confronting them with their own alterity or by capturing them in motion. From twin portraits with almost imperceptible differences to dancers photographed in action, hers is an aesthetic of instantaneity.
Text : Carole Vantroys.
Translation : Pamela Hargreaves.
Artwork of
Isabelle Waternaux
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