“Chance placed in my hands two very similar photographs. On the first, two little girls. On the second, two women in their thirties. Same decor, same pose, same angle, same complicity. I wanted to give life to these mystery photographs, to invent their stories, and start time running again.
For several years I have collected these amateur photographs. I find them at flea markets and garage sales, on the Internet, in my own family albums. Deprived of their stories, these photographs fall into oblivion. Freed from their function as memories, without words to go with them, these photographs become so common and ordinary that they allow viewers to tell their own stories. They become blank sheets onto which we can project our dreams and imagination. I develop scenarios in which I give these anonymous people lives. I create connections between the images, by bringing them together. What occurs is a shift from the true to the false, from the real to the fictional.”
Sylvie Meunier was born in 1973 in Fontenay-Sous-Bois. A visual artist, she founded the association Instantanés ordinaires. In 2011, she received in the Lo Pradal international prize at the Emergent – Lleida festival in Spain.
Quand je serai… grand
September 8 – November 4, 2012
22 rue Saint-Pierre
60000 Beauvais
France
