Pauline Rochas and Carole Beaupré, two young New York photographers, explain their current series entitled Bones.
One look and what you see is a figure against a brooding dark background that appears both sensual and enigmatic. A nod to the Duo’s eye for the mysterious allure often found in the shots in their body of work of fashion and luxury products “natures mortes” or “still life” as the francophone prefers to call say. A deeper look and you sense the spiritual and symbolic subtext of what looks like nature’s answer to pre-fossilized figure studies. Inspired by the notion of death and the life being born from death, Carole & Pauline have always seen bones as objects of art.
Their fascination is born out of the remains of death and what is left on earth after muscle, sweat, blood air leave’s a body. The photographs are oversized portraits of found pieces of bones from a single deer found in the Northeast area. Noting that deers often return to where they were born in order to die, Carole Beaupré & Pauline Rochas borrow subtext found in poems from famous English poets and how nature allows bones to communicate a history, a story, a life lived but living on, after death. Using bones to communicate their own stories of perfection, nature, womanhood, mother figures, angelic imagery and the welcoming of darkness in nature, the artists see how bones are often transformed into sculpture, objets d’art, jewelry, chandeliers, bookends and other utilitarian uses for human thirst of aesthetic consumption.
The large scale series of Bones photographed is an enduring subject in today’s juxtaposition of extreme dualities found in life and death, consumption and decay, nature and spiritualism — found in today’s modern culture.
Carole Beaupré & Pauline Rochas
Carole & Pauline’s art backgrounds started formally at New York’s FIT and after matriculating and working in the fashion and design field, they subsequently set up shop and hence, Coolife was born. Since 2000, Carole Beaupré and Pauline Rochas are the forces behind Coolife Studio. A full service digital photography studio with esteemed clients in the luxury, fashion, beauty and fragrance, spirits and packaged goods world.
Bones The team’s first exhibition/book project and the subject they have chosen is perhaps symbolic and reflective of their fascination with life, death and the inevitable temperance of nature.
