2023 marks the entry of Dolorès Marat into the Photo Poche pantheon. Born in 1944, the French photographer has made a lasting impression with the blurred motion and chromatic richness of her dreamlike world.
The introduction to Photo Poche by French writer and art editor Éric Reinhardt tells the story of Dolorès Marat: her turbulent life and the salvation she found in photography, the sensitivity with which she approached the world and the special attention she paid to the materiality of a photograph, the elegance of the prints she entrusted to her great magician, Michel Fresson, until his death in 2020.
Photography was a childhood dream for Dolorès Marat. Her mother decided otherwise, and steered her towards a career as a dressmaker. But fate, or destiny, had other plans. One day, Dolorès Marat answered an ad placed by photographer Claude Froissard, who was looking for a “handyman”. He introduced her to photography and soon realised that she had a gift. Dolorès Marat assisted him for several years as a printer, retoucher and sales assistant. She then moved to Paris where she became a laboratory assistant for the magazine Votre beauté.
Her complicated family situation meant that she did not turn to photography until late in life. When she bought her first camera, a Minolta, Dolorès Marat was almost forty. She looked at her surroundings and, with her characteristic poetry, transcended the details of her daily life, which became mirrors of our states of mind.
This female silhouette in front of the blue mosaics of the metro, this sinuous tree bathed in an electric green, these scenes of nightlife… they all haunt us like dreams that follow us for days on end. Éric Reinhardt refers to her photographs as hallucinations. Indeed, their sensory power is unique: “Dolorès Marat has the ability to photograph not the thing, but the effect that the thing has on her senses, which sets her apart from other land surveyor photographers in pursuit of the decisive moment.
Although they take us on a journey from France to India, the United States, Great Britain and Jordan, the seventy photographs in her Photo Poche plunge us into the world of Dolorès Marat. Placed end to end, her photographs form a single poem, a photographic tableau of astonishing cohesion. Dolorès Marat remains true to her vision, leaving an indelible mark on our own.
La photographie au saut du lit
In the Photo Poche collection, n°175
Editions Actes Sud, 2023
144 pages
ISBN : 978-2-330-17886-4
