On December 4th, 2014, at the Hôtel de Sauroy, a dozen photographs will be on display. Unclothed strangers languish on the cliffs of Etretat or in the crimson aisles of the opera house. This is the sketch for a photo book that Sonia Sieff is working on. Alice, Mâati, Charlène, Nadine, Aurélia and Giulia make up the first few chapters of a book scheduled to be released next year and which might be called, in a somewhat old-fashioned way, French Women at Home or French Women by Season. Alice Mâati, Charlèene, Nadine, Arélia, Giulia… And Sonia?
Sonia Sieff is a tall blond boy who gestures suddenly. Watching her at work behind her camera, setting the light and anchoring her feet into the tall grass of a cliff on a brisk summer day, we see that femininity is retractable, like a cat’s claws, which disappears in the shadows off-camera. She has the shadow of a androgynous biker that calls to mind the Epinal print of the first women photojournalists whose bold, liberated bodies achieved the aspiration formulated ten years before by Simone de Beauvoir. Women photographers, says Sonia, recognize each other like the homosexuals in Proust, through imperceptible signs. In the role reversal between subject and object, gender boundaries blur.
Read the full article on the French version of L’Oeil.
Lolita Pille
EXHIBITION
UN NU, Sonia, Barbara et Jeanloup Sieff
From December 4 to December 21st 2014
Hôtel de Sauroy
58 rue Charlot
75003 Paris
France
https://www.facebook.com/durevevents?fref=ts
http://soniasieff.com
