The filmmaker, writer, model, actress and dancer Dominique Abel is the kind of artist we love. She played hooky as a student; her real classes were the films she snuck off to see in the afternoon: Italian Neorealism, Bresson, the Nouvelle Vague. She got involved with theatre through internships with Ariane Mnouchkine. But it was in Istanbul, where she followed her older brother, a philosophy professor, that she finished her studies by satisfying a long-held desire: leave France to discover another world. This experience turned her life on its head, as did a record she had brought with her: Castillo de arena by Camarón de la Isla et Paco de Lucía. It was a revelation.
Back in France with a high school degree, Abel enrolled at the Cours Simon and made a living as a stripper. But she was haunted by the demon of flamenco, and always would be. In 1983, she suddenly left for Madrid, in the middle of the Movida movement, with 1,000 francs in her pocket and not speaking a word of Spanish. On a recommendation from Antonio Gades, she joined a flamenco dance academy, Amor de Dios, and spent the next seven years giving her body over to the demands of this new form of expression under the guidance of such masters as Manolete, Guïto, Carmen Cortes and La Tati. At night she partied with the greatest. During the day she worked as a model at the Academy of Fine Arts, where the professors and students dubbed her Bella Durmiente. A photographer saw her dancing. It was the beginning of a profession, modeling, which she never would have chosen on her own, when she met Javier Vallhonrat. It was then that, while never giving up her dancing, Abel acted for F. Dupeyron, J.A. Bardem and Fina Torres. Gradually, her desire to photograph the artists she loved got the best of her, and she moved to the other side of the camera.
The exhibition currently on display at the Galerie Photo Vivienne is the record of a time when Abel posed for three major photographers. The photos show several women in one—a book published about Abel was named Caméléone (Chameleon)—and an incredible taste for posing, informed by her experience as a dancer and actress, as well as the complicity between Abel and the “masters of light,” as she calls them, who “taught her so much.” Viewers will discover the power and intelligence, but also the fragility, of a great artist.
EXHIBITION
Dominique Abel: Le modèle et ses photographes
Galerie Photo Vivienne
Until May 25th, 2014
4, Galerie Vivienne
75002 Paris
France
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