Artist Blog

Every week an artist whose single image was published by Der Greif is given a platform in which to blog about contemporary photography.

All acts of photographical creation must be audacious, not in terms of virtuosity but in terms of accepting that this visual expression is first and foremost paradoxical. The work of Anais Boudot, which I shall present here, is of this type; rendering it difficult to speak of photography, as the artist herself refers to it as photographical. Indeed, these photos come at us like creatures tearing apart all realism and crumbling to dust all temptations of simple representation.  In “Exuvies” (an Exuvia being the envelope or exoskeleton an insect leaves behind after its moulting or metamorphosis) we find ourselves facing hybrid and fanciful spaces where reality dances with the devil. Anais Boudot transgresses the protocols of photography through the filter of experimentation, leaving behind all concerns of modern life, and testing the limits of her visibility.  For this, she uses long-forgotten (so-called archaic) methods, not for their aesthetic dimension but for their ability to act as a wake-up call and question the very idea of representation. The unsettling majesty of her photographs lies within the infra-ordinary, a floating poetic presence that has freed itself from what is simply decorative. These dreams of things are a dive suspended in mid-air where the photographical isn’t but a simple memory activated: we are at an interstice between dreamlike surrealism and primitive disembodiment.  The elegance of the flower bouquet lies within its absence and toxic aura, forests become crepuscular and stifling, cradle to the sacrifice of contemplation, a handshake becomes a mutating sculptural power struggle. This incarnation crystallizes through the need to take back roads and the acceptance that the exploration of these strange, solitary and unknown times be done through instability, doubt and humility. The photographical matter becomes thus porous, a duality between what we see and what eludes us. The shade in our sight. Anais Boudot explores how we comprehend photographical images beyond simple stills. Her love of experimentation, of visual disruption and her desire to question her certitudes and abilities have led her to video and installation art (these can be seen on her website). Her spectral poetry can be seen pushing the depths of the visible world. Anais Boudot (fr, 1984), lives in Roubaix, France. Graduate of the Ecole Nationale Supérieure de la Photographie in Arles, and Fresnoy -  Studio National des Arts Contemporains in Tourcoing www.anais.boudot.free.fr/   (Translation Ramona Bourhis)