Carole Bellaïche is exhibiting until September 17, 2023 at the Moulin Blanchard as part of Le Champs des Impossibles.
The wanderings of Carole Bellaïche in Le Perche
After Guillaume Zuili in 2019-21, Anne Rearick in 2020-21, Carole Bellaïche took a look at the society of the Perche in 2022. The artist came in residence for a few months in 2021/22 to meet the inhabitants, people whom we rarely come across on the sides of the roads because they are well sheltered in their farm or their manor house in a deep Perche. Thanks to some who convinced others, she was able to meet people of all conditions who, by dint of gentleness and sincerity, agreed to open their intimacy to the camera of the portraitist.
It is through a large fresco of a hundred black and white images sprinkled with a few colors, punctuated by a few still lifes and decorations, that she delivers a set of portraits full of humanity.
The exhibition presents the photographic series through projections and fade-outs on screens. The scenography designed by Christine Ollier for the cathedral barn escapes the traditional medium of photography and allows us to see the work in its entirety and to breathe life into these fleeting portraits.
The photographer Carole Bellaïche is known for her style which escapes the archetypes of the portrait because she likes what escapes reality, taking pictures on the spot, in the course of the conversation, she loves the blurry pictures and even superimposition. She doesn’t use sophisticated equipment to capture light. It is simply based on that of the place and brings out the characters from the ambient penumbra. Portrait painter of the world of cinema, her images are not those of the Harcourt studio, on the contrary she captures the ineffable, this almost nothing, these hands which sometimes say more than the face, these obsolete objects which dot the interiors, the smile fleeting and penetrating eyes that tell so much about the depth of the being.
A notebook in the Champ des Impossibles collection published by Filigranes has just been published with an interview with Fabien Ribery, a photographic critic who has worked with the artist for a long time. Secret words and little stories punctuate a life of photography and spice up the story.
The Actresses of Carole B.
In contrapposto, the Bellaïche cycle offers an overview of her work on the world of cinema in two exhibitions.
“I wanted for this exhibition to show my photos as I could have shown films. I photographed the first actresses at the age of 16-17 and I found in them accomplices in play with whom I have continued since, to create images, to take photos, but the most often wanting to put them in a place, in an atmosphere, as if that shot, that image, were the start of a film.
My passion for cinema has always influenced me a lot in my photographic research. Actresses and actors, always ready to play roles, to dress up, and sometimes to find their true face, are my regular models.
In this exhibition I have chosen to show images of my very beginnings in 1985 with Juliette Binoche and Julie Delpy, experiences, moments of play, unpublished photos, but also photos taken with my accomplices of the moment Isabelle Carré, Jeanne Balibar, Fanny Ardant, Isabelle Huppert these wonderful women with whom I have worked long term.”
The directors, these geniuses of the image
“I also wanted to show an excerpt from my work for the Cahiers du Cinéma, with which I worked for fifteen years. mythical filmmakers outdoors, in the orchard.”
Les Choses
This project, started in the spring of 2022, adaptation of a book by Georges Perec, is a work in progress. Of this project she says : I have always been very sensitive to the writings of Georges Perec, in their obsessions, their extravagance, and their madness. This book, “Things”, from which I am inspired in my own way, allows me to bring together my photographic obsessions. I haven’t finished my work but several themes have already been explored, the love relationship, the obsession with places and objects, and I was also able to enrich my series in the Perche in parallel with my portraits. This small exhibition reveals the beginning of my work”.
Exhibition until September 17, 2023
Moulin Blanchard
Le Blanchard
61340 Perche-en-Nocé, France
https://www.lechampdesimpossibles.com/moulin-blanchard
Le Champs des Impossibles
https://www.lechampdesimpossibles.com/
