This is the story of all mothers. This is the story of all sons. It is the story of an invisible bond that ties, unties, frays, tangles, and transforms until the ultimate detachment. A complex, powerful, delicate, ambivalent love that this project puts into photos and words.
First, there is the heart of a mother. This mother is the photographer and writer Sandrine Roudeix. She chose to work on twenty family photos to trace twenty years of merger and defusion with her son. Clipped, reprocessed, encrusted with excerpts from the autobiographical novel she published about her experience as a single mother, the works question the construction and deconstruction of the mother-son relationship from birth to adulthood and fill with words ( literally) the emptiness felt when her boy left home. On some images, the decorations disappear behind the text in favor of the duo which takes all the light. On others, it is the bodies that disappear, overwhelmed by the alphabet of memories.
Then there is the choir of mothers. Mothers living in Le Bourget, Montreuil, Blanc-Mesnil, Rosny-sous-Bois, Pré-Saint-Gervais, Noisy-le-Sec, Pantin and Paris, who agreed to pose with their elderly son aged 16 to 22 years old. And to talk to each other. That was the issue. Provoke an unprecedented dialogue between generations. To listen to them confide with modesty and sensitivity the way in which they saw their history, parenthood and filiation. Each family has its own way of being and responding. What is it to be a mother? What is it to be a son? How not to regret anything at the time of flight? Extending the words exchanged, each photo ultimately testifies to this singular bond woven through storms and clearings. Looks seek each other, flee each other, throw themselves in the same direction or in the opposite direction. The bodies brush against each other, touch each other, measure each other, avoid each other.
The whole forms around forty portraits which forcefully remind us that there are a thousand ways of being mother and son…
“Mother & Son is a project designed and implemented by La Capsule as part of Entre les images, a national program of photographic practice and transmission workshops developed by the Diagonal network with the support of the Ministry of Culture.”
Sandrine Roudeix : Mère & Fils
March 23 – April 26, 2023
La Capsule
André Malraux Cultural Center
10, avenue Francis de Pressensé, Le Bourget 93
100m from the RER station (line B)
01 48 38 50 14
https://reseau-diagonal.com/en/member/la-capsule#member-current-exhibitions-project
