Stephanie Solinas as investigation
As part of this year’s Rencontres d’Arles festival, a film by Stéphanie Solinas called ‘ Ne me regarde pas’ will be shown in the Église Saint-Blaise under the auspices of the 3e Scène (3rd stage) programme from the Paris Opera. The film literally gives the stage, at the Palais Garnier, to people who contribute to the artist’s thought processes, to the voices which form the basis for her work. This is a chance to (re)discover a challenging and exciting artist who focuses on identity, photography and their intertwining histories.
Stéphanie Solinas works both as photographer and visual artist, and each of her exhibitions applies several years of research, which she arranges in the museum or gallery space. She creates nuanced, investigative systems in which light is shed on each work by the subtle relationships with surrounding works. It is reflective work. Whatever the results – wherever the train of thought ends up – it is the process, the formulation of ideas, the conceptual journey, which the viewer takes with Solinas and her art, which is important and sharpens our thinking. Solinas exploits the possibilities of photography as a medium, conducting detailed investigations and creating ensembles which reveal how complex an act seeing really is. The artist trained in photography at the ENS Louis-Lumière and has a doctorate in visual arts, so her own journey demonstrates her interest in both the theory and practice of photography, especially where the two overlap. It is a rare photographer who tirelessly questions the medium, facing up to its interwoven weaknesses and impossibilities. Images cannot do everything, they are never neutral, and yet these assumptions are rarely challenged. Solinas plans to explore them with an always-unnerving intellectual rigour.
POLITICAL BODIES
The portrait, one of photography’s favourite genres since the 19th century, is at the heart of Solinas’ work. The Phénomènes series from 2007 comprises portraits of twins reproduced on calling cards, in a humorous nod to the history of photography. The address on the cards is for Eugène Disdéri’s studio. He was the inventor of the ‘carte de visite’, a portrait in calling card format, and
first used a divided frame to take multiple exposures on a single plate negative. Phénomènes reflected on the relationship between photography and identity. More effectively than DNA, it is the image which reveals the tiny differences between two individuals, in this case twins: their necessary otherness. Following on from this work, ‘Dominique Lambert’ and a resulting book emerged in 2010. These continue to ask questions about identity and the role photography plays in who we are. The artist performed a study, starting with the last name Lambert and the gender-neutral first name Dominique, the most popular unisex given name in France. Having listed all the Dominique Lamberts in France, she wrote to each of them asking them to take a personality test and answer a questionnaire. There emerged a text written by the ‘Consultative Committee for the Description of Dominique Lamberts’, comprising a psychologist, statistician, police inspector, lawyer and visual identity consultant, and a portrait which was then transformed into a photofit picture. The faces continued on their unique morphosis: Solinas sought out and photographed someone who looked like the photofit. Finally, a passport photograph of the real Dominique Lambert, in a sealed envelope, formed the last link in this representative chain. The artist appears here as an excessively systematic detective, at risk of exhausting herself due to her exhaustive investigations. It is all the more astonishing when we learn that she is merely adopting and applying the methods which states have perfected to define our identities. The information lost during such identification processes and the inevitable room left for interpretation now take on new meaning. The absurd is still there, but takes the form of a sad and terrible aspect of state power. One of the greatest qualities in Solinas’ work is that it is not assertive: it is subtle, and we must each do our own work to figure it out. Long after we have left the exhibition, meaning continues to emerge and develop; in time, her work will appear self-evident. The mug shot ‘Sans titre (M. Bertillon) - deux faces’ (2011) is a perfect example of this. Alphonse Bertillon introduced anthropometry into law enforcement in the 19th century, based on the idea that photography was the observation tool par excellence, as its mechanical nature guaranteed reliable reproductions. Bertillon provided the Paris police authority with identification sheets containing data on each criminal. Although this system was originally designed for people charged with a crime, it now applies to everyone in France: our national identity cards
« Déserteurs ». 2008-13. Série de 379 photographies empilées et extrait. La colonne : 25x90x18,5 cm Le tirage: 25x18,5 cm. Series of 379 piled-up photographs
are its direct descendants. Now we are all treated as potential criminals. Solinas reminds us that creating images is never neutral, because “photography’s surveillance power has extended to the whole of society, and at the same time responsibility for representing yourself and justifying your identity has been delegated to each individual. We are all affected […] The only evidence that an individual can provide of their own identity is outside themselves: it is the officially accepted image-equivalent of themselves. But that photograph is themselves (1).” In ‘Sans titre (M. Bertillon) - deux faces’, Solinas did not choose any old anthropometric information at random: she chose a mug shot of its inventor, thus establishing the criminologist Bertillon as a model suspect. The artist, ably assisted by special software, has broken down the two views of Bertillon (front and profile views) onto several sheets of paper, which themselves are cut up and reassembled to recreate his features. The final piece of this jigsaw process is a paper mask of Bertillon mounted on a wooden base and shielded by a glass dome. This object is strange because his face is reproduced both on the outside and inside of the mask, which forces the person handling it to place their skin up against Bertillon’s if they are to adopt his identity and present it to the world. Bertillon may have ‘stolen our faces from us’, making a unique and intimate part of us into an object of power and control, but this work of art allows us to ‘take’ his face back in return.
ABSENT IMAGES
There are several reasons why the power of photography is undeniable, as Salinas repeatedly proves. So what happens when the image disappears? Does its subject continue to exist? This ‘negative’ aspect – what are or were you without your image – was the starting point for the show Déserteurs (2008-13) [2].To understand both the sad beauty of vanished faces and the challenge of exploring the extremes of what is real, you must see this series of works and find yourself face to face with all 379 disappearances: 379 photographs of dead people which time and erosion have erased from the tombs at Paris’ Père Lachaise cemetery. Solinas spent months walking the cemetery’s paths to find these absences, record these blank marble medallions, these bleached-out faces: to make these final photographic portraits of those who have vanished, on which the coordinates for the graves’ locations are inscribed in braille. Being both dead and no longer present in their images, these individuals have been ‘dissolved’ twice and may be forgotten for good. The artist invites us to bring them back to life, by visiting their graves or by viewing the art. This collection is of course sad, but there is also an unexpected spirit of defiance. What if, in a world where images are used for control, there were freedom in anonymity?
SEEING THE INVISIBLE
Solinas moves on, having examined the claims photography makes to objectivity and the power it holds, to remind us that all representations are necessarily arbitrary, with tiny shifts and transformations. She has shown an interest for several years in the invisible aspects of our identity. Genetic ties, memory, conscience and faith also determine who we are, within that hidden part of ourselves. It might seem impossible for a photographer to display these aspects, once revealed. Yet Solinas is not working on this as a challenge, wishing to glory in pushing the boundaries of perception: she is simply seeking to materialise that which shapes us. Thus she asks us to think of the visible and the invisible as two interlinked realities, and makes room for the immaterial aspects at the very heart of what is tangible. The artist has begun a trilogy known as ‘les Aveugles éblouis’, for which she will work in three different countries, the first being Iceland where she photographed ‘le Pourquoi pas ?’ (The why not?). Next is Italy where she has been in residence for a year at the Villa Me
dici (3) in Rome and explored ‘ l’Inexpliqué’ (the unexplained). Third will be the United States, where she developed ‘ Devenir soi
même’ (becoming yourself). ‘ Le Pourquoi pas ?’ was shown at FOAM and is on at Maison de l’Amérique latine until July 2018 (4). It explores Iceland’s hidden worlds and beliefs, and the importance of the genetic ties present in the country.This show features
Équivalences (2014-17), a series of 66 cyanotypes made by inserting photosensitive paper into the faults in Iceland’s rocky landscape, known to be inhabited by elves. Thus photography explores vision’s blind spots, capturing on film things which never normally reaches the Earth’s surface: secret phenomena. Solinas turns detective once again, collecting clues and words. Iceland, Italy and the United States are the sites for her fieldwork: not just places but also methods. As an artist/anthropologist, Solinas questions, samples and explores the history of these sites. She encounters their inhabitants and produces her cross-cutting findings in situ, taking into account everyday, ordinary representations and common practice. In the role of neutral observer, Solinas presents for us religious figures, mediums and artists with the same scientific approach; she refuses to create a hierarchy of speakers or knowledge. Each of these three projects will also be made into a book: each of these three projects will also be the subject of a book – the first one is le Guide du Pourquoi pas ? (The Guide to Why not?) and will be published in September 2018 by American publisher X Artists’ Books. Here Solinas demonstrates her interest in design and publishing, which will allow the reader/viewer to hold and explore at home the rich worlds and images which she uncovers.
Translation, K. Sanderson
(1) Stéphanie Solinas, ‘Comment la photographie a inventé l’identité. Des pouvoirs du portrait.’ in Pierre Piazza (published under the direction of), Aux origines de la police scientifique. Alphonse Bertillon précurseur de la science du crime, Karthala, 2012. (2) See Stéphanie Solinas, Déserteurs. Cent photographies, RVB Books, 2013. (3) Translator’s note: also the Académie de France. (4) Dominique Lambert/Le Pourquoi pas ?, FOAM, Amsterdam, 24 February –16 April 2017 ; l’Invention de Morel, group exhibition, Maison de l’Amérique latine, 16 March – 21 July 2018.
Hélène Giannecchini is a writer and critic, and curated this exhibition. She has a PhD in literature and is a member of the Institut ACTE (Paris I/CNRS). Her research explores the relationship between text and image. She teaches the theory of contemporary art at the École européenne supérieure de l’image de Poitiers-Angoulême.