The photographer FLORE is winner of the 2018 Prize for her project: The smell of the night was that of jasmine. The Prize and the exhibition have benefited since the beginning of the exclusive patronage of F. Marc de Lacharrière (FIMALAC). It is awarded in partnership with the 2018 Academy of Fine Arts.
Born in 1963, Franco-Spanish, FLORE lives and works in Paris. She defines her poetic and timeless universe as a political act, a way of positioning herself in the face of the “bundle of darkness that comes from her time” (G. Agamben).
After having been a photographer for the press for 10 years, she started to devotes herself exclusively to her personal work in 2008. She carries out long-term work, often during her travels, particularly in the Near and Middle East. Her first monograph A French Woman in the East was published in 2014 by Postcart and the series is on display as part of the Month of Photography. In 2016, the book Lointains souvenirs, published by Contrejour, offered a variation on the Indochinese childhood of Marguerite Duras. In 2018, André Frère Editions publishes Camp de Rivesaltes, a place of suffering.
Her works are presented in prestigious institutions such as the Petit Palais Museum, the BnF, the MMP + of Marrakech, as well as at International Art Fair, and festivals. It is represented by several galleries in the world.
FLORE, inspired by Marguerite Duras, wishes to “return to Indochina”, an Indochina necessarily mythified, to invent photographically.
“In 2015, I spent three months between Vietnam and Cambodia in search of the places that Marguerite Duras named as those of her childhood. […] My paternal grandparents lived in Indochina at about the same time and in the same places as Marguerite Duras; Monsoon, wetness, beauty of the Mekong, dangers of the night, their stories have offered to my childhood its share of unfathomable mysteries by feeding what I feel today as part of a common imagination between her and me. In this, the Indochina of the Durassian childhood is not completely alien to me even if by whole sections it remains almost impossible to grasp. It is this mixture of intuition and misunderstanding, this round-trip made of stories between myself and the other, between Marguerite Duras and me, the challenge of photographing something that did not even exist, but of which we accept the postulate, this life that would have been lived almost 100 years ago and that she tells us, the life to which she gives life through writing, which fascinates me. […] I wish to be able to go back several months to realize a new series inspired by other texts of Marguerite Duras, and which echo the stories of this life that my grandparents lived in Indochina at the same time. […] These texts written by “someone who will never be back in her native country”. This litany of a life, these obsessive writings; how this country she left as a child , this exile, haunts her life and work, that’s also what interests me. »- FLORE
Flore – Camp de Rivesaltes, lieu de souffrance
october 16 – November 24, 2018
Photo Doc Galerie
Hotel de Retz
9 rue Charlot
75003 Paris
