synopsis
Acedia : State of pain and affliction linked to a lack of motivation, a weariness and disenchantment. From the point of view of Christianity, acedia is a fault. It was when I stumbled upon Ivan Goncharov’s Oblomov in my mother’s library that laziness became the guiding thread of my practice.
It is first of all a way to produce my own work since it is the time outside of work when I can recover my time to reinvest it freely as I choose. It is also a posture that I adopt since I intervene little on the real, in order to reveal only decontextualized fragments of it. It is thus by leaning over my doubts and my scattered dreams, by photographing what intrigues me, what instinctively attracts me, random elements that are significant and insignificant but which find no other link than a kind of daily chance, that I have constructed this set of images. My mind wanders, gets lost, concentrates on an element, gives it importance and resumes its movement.
Finally, this subject has also become a motif for study. In most of the images, they are non-events where the signs of an era remain discreet. The laziness, inhabited by these characters, proposes to translate a refusal of life as it is given to live, a search for freedom, or a space for introspection.
Photos of the book
technical information
Publisher : Witty Books
10/2024
Dimensions : 23 x 29 cm
112 pages
10/2024
Dimensions : 23 x 29 cm
112 pages
about Louise Desnos
French photographer and video maker, born in 1991, based in Paris (France)
A 2017 graduate of the Arts Décoratifs de Paris, Louise Desnos develops a delicate, singular style of writing, both in personal projects, collaborations with other artists, and commissions for players in the world of culture, the arts or fashion.
Her practice maintains a paradoxical and poetic relationship with everyday coincidence. Her gaze is focused on details, materials and surfaces, bodies, identities and territories. Capturing or provoking situations and “playgrounds” that are fertile for the production of images, she builds her series by looking at her doubts and scattered dreams, by photographing what intrigues and attracts her instinctively: random elements – significant and insignificant.
Her vision and her work question the notions of laziness and melancholy (Acedia), of territory (with her images taken in China and Lebanon), of representation – of identities and genders (Women under Influence) or of photography itself (Scroll, in collaboration with Sophia Taillet).
Also touching on portraiture, documentary and fashion, she carries out commissions for the cultural press (Les Inrocks, M le Monde, Trax, Society, Mouvement, Kinfolk), the fashion world (Nike, Le Bon Marché, American Vintage, Carne Bollente) and collaborates, in parallel, with arts centres (Villa Noailles, Maison Populaire de Montreuil, La Horde, Ballet National de Marseille), but also labels, artists, designers and directors.
Since 2016, her work has been regularly exhibited in France (Festival de Mode et de Photographie, La Villa Noailles, La Design Parade, Paris Photo, la Villette, la Maison Populaire de Montreuil), in Europe (Festival Off Bratislava) and in China (Shanghai, Beijing, Xiamen and Chengdu.
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Publisher : Witty Books
10/2024
Dimensions : 23 x 29 cm
112 pages
10/2024
Dimensions : 23 x 29 cm
112 pages