One of the guidelines I wanted to apply for my guest blogging was to invite photographers to talk about works in progress, about their process and their doubts, because I feel like we see too much of perfect works with perfect statements which leads us to think those artists are creative geniuses. It was hard to find artists who would accept to show this vulnerability, but Lucile said yes!

Lucile and I have been friends for a very long time. We met in the first photography school I attended before moving to Arles (France), and we sticked together in order to put up with never-ending chemistry or physics classes which made us think we would die of boredom. At that time, our photos were naive, young, and we didn’t know shit about what contemporary photography was. I left this school after one year and we didn’t see each other much, but we always shared our works. For years, we have been there for each other, giving advice, critics, and encouragements.Whenever I scan new films, I immediately send screenshots to her and wait for her « yes » or « no ». Lucile always had a tendency to photograph her family, her sisters, her mother, even before we met at school. While one could say my work tend to a fascination for masculinity, hers is definitely leaning towards the feminine side of the spectrum, so I guess we have a good balance between us!

I love all of her projects, but I always had a thing for this project in particular. There is something mysterious and tense about these bodies, at the same time intimate and distant, something powerful in these women of different generations, that always makes me fascinated by her images. To have an idea for a work and make it can be easy, but what is trickier is letting your subconscious guide your work, lead you to things you didn’t even know you had inside, and then make something of it. That’s what Lucile did with this work, following an instinct and photographing her family every summer, while she had other projects going on, and making something definitely personal and intimate. This is the kind of work for which you need no explanation, no “what exactly does she want to say with this”. I nurture a secret hope that she will make a book of it, and I’ll be the first to buy it.

Now I let Lucile talk about her work :)

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“This serie (Des Corps) is a kind of family album transcribed through the prism of flesh. I always feel a mix of fascination and anguish in the face of the inevitable aging of bodies. It’s very difficult for me to produce a speech on these images, because these are very intimate, very raw, and undoubtedly revealing of my own disorders. If some pictures may seem cruel at the first sight, I see them rather as proofs of the visceral love I feel for all these women. It’s quite paradoxical because we don’t touch each other in my family, I guess that took all these very close up portraits, it’ s a way of transgressing this physical barrier. As it is still an embryonic project, I begin to think of the different possibilities of showing these images. The rendering of the organic matter is essential, so I would like to test different print process like the Fresson, to avoid the smooth aspect of classical prints.”

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Lucile Boiron studied Applied Arts before turning to photography as a natural step when she attended the Ecole Nationale Supérieure Louis-Lumière in Paris. In 2016 her work takes a new turn, with new series like Internet Romance and Young Adventurers chasing the Horizon, opening a reflection on the possibilities of the photographic medium in art field. She explores hybridization process between different mediums, considering images as a building material. She actually lives and works in Paris