Nathalie Daoust (1977, Canada)
Canadian Nathalie Daoust has shown a great interest for the most intimate and darkest sides of female sexuality throughout her career as a photographer. She plays with the dynamic between the private and the public, and uses experimentation and her own techniques to break new ground in her photography. Melancholy, taboos, the twilight zone between dream and reality, illusions – her pictures communicate what words cannot.
As a newly-graduated photographer Nathalie moved from Montreal to New York, where she immediately began work on New York Hotel Story. For two years she lived at the Carlton Arms Hotel where every single room is decorated by artists from around the world. She moved from room to room in order to absorb the atmospheres and to experience each artist’s universe. The inspiration of the rooms resulted in her first exhibition and very first photography book.
She subsequently did several projects that focused on women. Street Kiss from Brazil is about the sex industry and women’s daily fight for dignity in Rio de Janeiro; Entre Quatre Murs, with its transparent pictures from Berlin, depicts 30 women’s daily lives in a forgotten world; Frozen in Time from Switzerland depicts illusion, mystique, fantasy, nakedness and tranquillity in the snow-covered Swiss alps.
Nathalie Daoust is not visiting the festival, but Nordic Light will show the DVD Tokyo Girls, an animation-like picture series of 30 seductive women from around the world, shot in ”red light” districts, with dancing, twisting poses connected in an eternal loop.
Nathalie’s latest project, Tokyo Hotel Story, continues her exploration of women’s sexuality. She has spent months at the Alpha In hotel, one of the main S&M love hotels in Japan. There has she photographed 39 women in their private rooms, dressed in outrageous outfits. In her work, Nathalie enters taboo-laden arenas in order to reveal our need to escape from reality.
Nathalie has had a series of solo and joint exhibitions in Canada, USA, Poland, Spain, England and Japan. Her pictures are published the world over, and she has also received several prizes.
