The history of photography is played out and broken down between reality and lies, document and artifice, in a continuous ambivalence that questions and constructs the relationship that the photographer has with her camera. Cindy Sherman plays the many subjects of her photo series, and she also systematically holds her own making photography an autobiographical tool. “I feel anonymous in my work,” she says, “when I look at the images, I never see me. (…) Sometimes, I disappear.” This disappearance of “I” to support a series of archetypal and universal portraits is found in the work of Johanna Benaïnous and Elsa Parra. In their first photo series A couple of them (2014-2015), which is comprised of more that seventy-two portraits and one video, the viewer thinks he’s facing a gallery of portraits well before understanding that they are all the same models, the two photographers, offering a range of real generational typology.
At first glance, their work seems to reveal a kaleidoscope of individualities, portraits captured through cities and contexts. The photographed characters look at us,their eyes focusing on the camera lens , becoming subjects: young girls in the metro following each other, boys in hunters’ attire coursing through the woods, and high schoolers on vacation. However, throughout the images, this repertoire of stories and identities becomes blurred. The same two faces appear over and over. They are those of the two artists, which transformed into myriads of characters. The portraits follow each other but do not resemble each other, alternating amongst female, male, laughing, sulking, blonde, or brunette characters, and it is always the same faces that come to haunt the viewer.
Beyond the feat of transformation and of being chameleon like, what is happening in their photos is, first and foremost, a portrait of youth. The photographers, by putting on the clothes of their characters, go beyond wearing costumes; they incarnate their subjects, and the duration of the work touches on a theatrical performance. For hours, sometimes days, Johanna Benaïnous and Elsa Parra put themselves in the shoes of their characters. They are no longer posing, they are becoming. The photography is, in any case, the result of a performance, like a trace, a memory of these ephemeral theater pieces which only the protagonists attended.
Marine Benoît-Blain
Elsa Parra and Johanna Benaïnous, A couple of them
From October 17 through November 20, 2016
Part of the exhibition Felicita
Palais des Beaux-Arts
13 rue Malaquais
75006 Paris
