SAUVÉES DES EAUX

2013

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Original photographs (black and white silver prints), passe-partout, paper, tracing paper, mold, shown under plexiglas

Variable dimensions,

The works belonging to the series Sauvées des Eaux were created from photographs that a collector entrusted me with. He had bought them at the Galerie Françoise Paviot about ten years ago, had left them in their original wrapping only to find them in a severely altered state aftera water damage. Paradoxically, the great care put into preserving these prints, with the help of cardboard mounts, tracing paper, cardboard protection and wrapping, had only contributed in worsening the damage.

When discovering for the very first time these prints by different photographers such as André de Dienes, Suzy Embo, Raymond Bachelard or Walker Evans, I felt that the cardboards and papers that were associated to them - similarly covered in mold, faded or stuck to one another - also created an image by merging with the prints they were supposed to protect.

I meant to highlight the presence of these many protections by showing each photograph integrated to its initial conservation apparatus, but by assembling these various elements in a different way, specific to each image and to each photograph.