This serie explore the land with stones and vegetation.
The first action was to immerse myself in quarries and uninhabited places before to take pictures.
After this, I worked on my images in darkroom. My rule was to not transform the image in a digital form. I didn’t wanted to transform the analogue quality like the grain. I also wished to keep the materiality in photography.

Then, I selected some parts in the films to enlarge it. Those enlargements relate to my experience in the environment; my perception in the visited places just as the sensibility felt in the space.
Finally, the work is presented in many different form. On one hand, there is the originals prints on matt baryta paper. On the other hand, the images are projected on large format to increase the immersion to the viewers.

The images are extracted and created from 3 original analog prints. 

LAND

Ephemeral, adj, (Greek ephé̄mer(os) short-lived, lasting but a day) : lasting a very short time
In the minds of the photographer Jean-Michel Fauquet, the first process calls on sculpture before to create photographs. The subject is made of poor materials. Air dried, the potteries are likely to break. Trace of existing documents, the photographs suggest the memory. The object on the image seems to disappear and fade as a revelation about fragility of the elements. The attempt to push the abstraction at its maximum give to the reader a notion of disappearance. Italian painter of the 20th century, Giorgio Morandi is famous for the simplification concerning the forms. While still life painting is a synonym of details, Morandi realise a degree of abstraction of the painted object. My images are inspired from this initiative.
Tracing paper place on the top of printing accentuate the effect of disappearance and fragility. Such the work of Daisuke Yokota, my creation is in permanent research, constant resurgence. In this way, Ephemeral present some images realised by wet-collodion process. According to the orientation of the glass and the background, the photo reveal more or less details.

Ephemeral

“Yes, I am palimpsest too, a place made over but trying to trace back”⁣⁣
— Trace: Memory, History, Race, and the American Landscape, Lauret Savoy 

Years after years, this process evolves. Within this process, a rock gets eroded as much as it collects more residue.⁣⁣
As history passes, just like the land with erosion traces our personal stories are marked.⁣⁣
⁣⁣
Lauret Savoy writes in her book Trace: Memory, History, Race, and the American Landscape that “Sand and Stone are Earth’s fragmented memory. Each of us, too, is a landscape inscribed by memory and loss”.⁣⁣
In this point of view, I assimilate stones as a representation of each personal story. We all had a story before our birth: where are we coming from ? What is our origin ? What did our ancestors ? Rocky mountains existed before us and will still do after us. The earth science which is geology gives us the key to read the past of our land and learn from it. What about us ? If we have the opportunity we can ask to our grandparents but we will never know enough. They will leave with all this knowledge, which we will never know. What to do of all these questions we will never be able to ask ? How to find an answer of these silenced memories ? How can we re-trace our story when we don’t have our ancestors anymore ?⁣⁣

Palimpsest

ROCKS I, 2019
CMYK Silkscreen
Edition of 7
85x60cm (image) on paper of 87 x 62cm

Part of an ongoing project. 

ROCKS I

“In Search of my Curls” is a work about the heritage and the question of ourselves.
A research into what is passed on in the family, what remains from our origin and how to identify with it.

I am looking for my origins and my curls are the basis of this investigation. No one in my close family share the same distinctive characteristic

My project tells the difficulty of not finding what I am looking for. An unsuccessful research through archives, DNA tests and involving my close family members.

The work go along with 5 fictional exchanges with my ancestors. I wrote a list of questions I would have liked to ask to my ancestors and then give them to my parents. The questions are an attempt to be close to my ancestors, and an idea of how they would respond. From this, I wrote fictional stories, fictional exchange with my ancestors: what would they had pass on me. Obviously, this isn’t true, it could have been written in a lot of different versions. What is veridical is that the transmission is done by close relatives and that is often the only source of knowledge, the rest is in the imagination.

Finally, the question of identity is inherent in any search for origin. Genealogists tend to find similarities and hereditary traits. As a genealogist, I seek to explain something on the basis of verified data and thus strengthen my identity.

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Aurélie Sorriaux

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