“Every symbolic act originates in the impossible grief of the first object of love, the mother”
Serge Tisseron — Le mystère de la chambre claire —
Myrtille m’s photography focuses on research into identity and the reconstitution of memory.
In her series, Object(s), myrtille m carries out an emotional inventory of objects belonging to her mother, who disappeared suddenly when she was five years old. Lacking any memories of her, she seeks to piece together her mother’s identity, and in doing so, understand her own identity.
But these things are never straightforward. Her research began with her mother’s adoption (involving changes of surname and christian name, multiple changes of address and fragmented education). It seemed her mother never wanted to understand her own origins. So myrtille m set off along untrodden paths: four years of administrative enquiries, internet research (on social networking sites and specialist genealogy websites), meetings, information gathering, which would lead her into the depths of a troubled family history full of secrets, unspoken stories and legends. At the beginning of her quest myrtille m gathered together Object(s) belonging to her mother which she had kept for years in drawers, cupboards and boxes. She then decided to create an inventory. The result is a series of fifteen images, some of which have a commentary, others just a title. The images depict the bond between myrtille m and the mother she knows so little of. The images attempt to give each woman back her place.
“My interest in photography began at the age of fifteen. I remember the first time I developed a black and white photograph. It was an image of my mother as a child doing gymnastics on the beach. I must have developed this negative dozens of times, telling myself it was a way of perfecting my technique.
At that time I wasn’t ready to confront reality. But the ‘black box’* had already begun its work. I had to keep the bond between us, accept what had happened and confront her absence. It was as though by developing this image again and again, some detail would jump out at me and I would understand everything ! What do I remember of her ? Who was she ? What sort of child, woman and mother ?
I abandoned the ‘artistic’ practice of photography for nearly twenty years. Then, a year ago, a few months before my thirty-fifth birthday, I realised I was about to reach the age my mother was when she ended her own life, the night of 13-14 June 1982. The date of the 14 June 2012 terrified me. What if I didn’t survive that night? The time had come for make the story mine, give it meaning and at last reconstruct my own life.”
