Trained as a graphic designer, I decided in 2016 to devote myself entirely to photography. Today, the more I advance in my artistic practice, the more I approach my projects from a documentary angle, but I think of them from the outset with an aesthetic approach, even plastic if the subject lends itself to it. By mixing these different ways of working on my subject, I go beyond the imposed categories (documentary, visual photography, etc.) to invent a language that is my own. I do not lock myself into a single writing, the technique adapts each time, to serve the photographic purpose: sharp or blurred photographs, in black and white or in color, movement or inertia, smooth appearance or grainy, through other techniques like photomontage, collage or coloring, everything must be possible. Through photography I seek to give voice to those forgotten by history and to those who are deprived of freedom of expression. I also seek to go where the spotlights have gone out and invest places full of past stories to question them today, places with their own, intangible language, places to decipher. I seek to reveal what is hidden at first glance. Photographing is my way of being in the world, my means of expression because words often fail me. My photographs have been exhibited in different festivals in France and abroad. I am also a winner of the Sophot Prize for social and documentary photography, a finalist of the Roger Pic Prize and a recipient of the Friends of the Albert Kahn Museum scholarship. In this work “Piplantri, the paradox” exhibited in Houlgate at the festival “women s’exposent” I wanted in the manner of the cubists, by abandoning the classical perspective and the explosion of forms, to show the coexistence of two realities that intertwine in Piplantri, India, like this contrasting country. On the one hand, the exploitation of marble quarries and their disastrous consequences: drying of the land, disappearance of agriculture, endangering the lives of unprotected miners, diseases – silicosis or silico-tuberculosis – caused by the inhalation of dust particles. On the other, an emblematic initiative carried out to reduce female infanticide: the opening by the village of a bank account in the name of each newborn. The money deposited must be used to finance his higher education or his marriage. In return, the families undertake to plant 111 trees and not to marry off the girls before obtaining their diplomas.
Isabeau de Rouffignac
https://www.isabeauderouffignac.com/accueil.html/
Les femmes s’exposent 2024
June 7 – September 1, 2024
Houlgate, Normandie
www.lesfemmessexposent.com
