Colette Pourroy scrambles the signals. Her photographs catch us by surprise. We find ourselves floating between reality and fiction, memories and dreams; constantly going back and forth between the past and the present. We enter a visual territory where references and influences cross paths, blend and nourish a personal, intimate, yet universal narration.
Colette Pourroy has recreated and staged her childhood. Particularly, the memory of her father, of whom she sketches an anti-portrait. She doesn’t indulge here in the story of a painful or contentious relationship. No pathos, no awkwardness, no voyeurism. She explores an absence and gives it heart and soul.
Echos of the German Expressionism of Friedrich Murnau or Fritz Lang traverse several of Colette Pourroy’s compositions. Her own culture and visual training are also evident in the construction of her photographs. Whether conscious or not, these influences give a universal character to the series. They can freely resonate with us, touch a chord in us and trigger a return to our own intimate memories or emotions; causing our own little cinematic, photographic or literary flashback, as did “Madeleines of Proust.”
It’s in this theater of shadows and light that Colette Pourroy produces the portrait of this evanescent father. The apparitions of this figure in a staircase, on the pediment of a wall, on the drapes of a window are followed by a glimmer, an expectation. By a delicate, fragile hope, yet still, a hope.
Colette Pourroy lives and works in Paris and in Provence (south of France). After attending ENSAD and studying art and communications technology, she specialized in drawing and photography. Her work has regularly been exhibited since 2003.
Weekend portfolio selected by W.M Hunt
