In Anamnèse, Isabelle Levistre explores the world of childhood with a Holga, offering at the same time a personal and universal vision of this mystery-filled period. Made between 2008 and 2015, the black and white series was just published by GLC Editions thanks to crowdfunding.
In Isabelle Levistre’s Anamnèse, a world of its own, characters appear and disappear. Are there two of them, three? Or is it the same person who is, like in Paul Verlaine’s Familiar Dream, “each time, neither quite the same nor quite another” ?
Nothing is sure. Everything seems fragile and uncertain, as if in suspense, in this enchanted kingdom. The proof being that we think we have already seen its inhabitants, but if we crossed them, we would not recognize them. They are, at the same time, unique and insignificant, accessible and obscure, visible and invisible. Us and them.
Photo after photo, Isabelle, scrambles tracks with scenes of children captured at the age where to live was to play and to play was to live. The photographer herself also plays hide-and-seek in this black and white album, where time no longer runs and where the difference between scenes of life and moments of play is tenuous. She tells stories, including her own story. That of her twins and of each of us at this precise interstice taking place at the dawn of existence and in light of reality. They are furtive moments that we would assume she steals from childhood if they were not reproduced in such a nuanced manner, alternating the sweet and the sour.
These ephemeral sketches would naturally be forgotten if Isabelle had not immortalized them on the fly, giving them an eternal life in square format, an ideal choice to open one singular window upon the world. A world which the photographer puts at a distance. Because, strangely, it is also a little bit of herself she is looking for, between observation and meditation. A game of doubles, a game of mirrors: the coming and going between reality and fiction is incessant and perpetual, powered by a few superimposed images that subtly punctuate the series. A trouble causing, destabilizing, even worrisome bias. Sometimes blurred, as are memories , Isabelle Levistre’s photos more often suggest what they are not showing. Bewitching, they have the power to awaken our individual memories and reanimate them. The delicate crossing of an enchanting world.
Sophie Bernard
Anamnèse, Isabelle Levistre
Published by GLC Editions
39 €
