the exhibition can be seen on the website of the gallery
galerie vrais rêves
www.vraisreves.com
You have seen through her academic background, Bénédicte loves exploring, searching, discovering. Her first works explored landscapes that seemed ordinary and mundane, but in fact, these landscapes held tiny traces, slow changes that only
the acute vision of a photographer could capture. But her work is not limited to simply taking pictures; she also manipulates the photographic material, peeling at the
image, until getting to the essential where diazo layers are used to slowly, over the course of days, make an impression of the spectators present and, once developed, reveal the trace of their passage. It is with this ephemeral work, this passing of time, that we find in the first series of the Centrale du Bugey, titled “La terre - l’éther”. Here, Bénédicte uses a vertical format. The cooling towers, occupying so little room at the bottom of the photo, leave all this space for the ascending clouds clearing into the
sky. We are in the midst of an allegory: man can create such magnificent clouds,
misty or dense, light or dark. We can be carried away by these stunning, poetic images...even the cooling towers lying low in the photo have a devilish beauty. Each one of us is free to go further and ask questions regarding this transfer of energy. Bénédicte simply offers us an observation.
The same lightness is nowhere to be found in the second series, titled “Radios actives”. If we were to extend this metaphor, we could say the spark of energy released in the first series is as powerful as it is difficult to control. Firstly, the format: much more stocky, and bigger dimensions. Next, the image: the cooling towers take up almost the whole space, daunting, worrisome. The clouds are more compact and threatening. The vegetation that appears in the second series is puny and sickly, not able to balance.
There is more: to the artist’s surprise, the radio film that she uses as her support is itself bestowed with an energy: put into contact with light, bombarded by photons, the image changes whether we look at it right side up or in reverse; colors are brought to light, the blues and reds of the clouds, it will also evolve over time and no one can foresee how the image will look in one year. The metaphor is easy, I made it, not BR. Her only remark is “Look at what I have seen, look at what I have found and what I have done with it”.
It’s up to us to transform these “radios actives” into “sustainable development”
Marie Lucie Grossiord, December 2002
Bénédicte resides in Lyon but is originally from the region of Jura. With her grounded origins, she has kept the habit of doing work well done, of deep work that requires time, persistence, and serenity. After a solid path of art studies, she graduated with a degree in Fine Arts at the University of Saint-Etienne. She then furthered her experience with training in Versailles, Bourges, and England -, she has exhibited her photographic work in the region for over a decade. She has, in particular, shown the first component of her work on the Centrale du Bugey at the Vrai Rêves Gallery last June.
