Arles 2016 : Interview with Stéphanie Solinas

Organized as a part of the Grand Arles Express des Rencontres, the exhibition Dominiques Lambert by Stéphanie Solinas is on display at the Carré d’Art—Musée d’art contemporain in Nîmes. As an extension of that exhibition, another, entitled La Méthode des Lieux, is on view at the Cloître Saint-Trophime in Arles. We have met with the young French photographer a few days before the opening of the two exhibitions. Here is our conversation.

What fascinated you about the Halle Lustucru and inspired you to initiate a new process?

This process was developed during a yearlong residency following the invitation of Sam Stourdzé, director of the Rencontres d’Arles and the École Normale Supérieure in Arles. My starting point was an element deeply rooted in the Arlesian territory. The Halle Lustucru and its history reflected questions central to my work: the way we look at the Other, how reality is organized. Today belonging to the city of Arles, from the 1950s until 2003, the building housed the “Lustucru” factory. It was used as a rice warehouse until flooding in Arles put an end to industrial exploitation of the site. There followed a 21-month-long workers’ protest to preserve the site as a means of production, but it came to nothing. Then, several years ago, the metal structure was identified as the main building of the Exposition Coloniale in Marseille in 1906, the so-called Grand Palais. The issue for me was then to try to capture this rich and complex history and all the identities involved: that of the building and those of the men and women who populated it, in the context of something that today is no longer visually accessible. How can one go back in time through photography, what elements will allow you to gain access to a reality that today is invisible?

What other works will be exhibited at St Trophime?

Upstairs is my other area of exploration: a photographic installation which brings together archival images and my own images and videos, organized chronologically to guide the visitor through both the geographic displacement of the Halle since it left Marseille and its journey in time between 1906 and today, in essence presenting the survey of 110 years of history of the building.

Are there any underlying connections with your other exhibition at the Carré d’Art, Dominiques Lambert?

Yes, in terms of my work as a whole, this is another project exploring the questions of identity and the collective, or in other words, how identity is always at a point of contact between an individual and the collective. I felt this very strongly in La Méthode des Lieux, and the idea was also a starting point in my work on Dominiques Lambert, a population of 191 namesakes, a tension between the individual and the collective. I am curious to see how an individual entangled in his or her own story enters in resonance with a larger, collective history. Nevertheless, temporally, these are two distinct projects, since I worked on Dominiques Lambert for seven years, bringing it to a close with a book published by RVB Books.