After Une Ville Phantome, a series he continues to work on since 2013, French photographer Thiqbaut Derien presents his daughter Angèle discovering the “new world”.
Angèle is small. Angèle is a child. She is planted right in the middle of each image. Along the Saint Lawrence River or an Avenue in Brooklyn, on a dock on Lake Maggiore or in the Port of Stockholm, Angèle is always alone. However, Angèle fears nothing, she has the fragile assurance of a loved, happy child. The images flow as a voyage, and we become attached to this little face that makes us look at this new world that surrounds her. The majesty of the buildings, the great spaces, the overabundance of supermarket shelves, the mess of pool lockers. Time passes, decors change, only this fixed gaze remains. What is she thinking? Angèle is not only a little girl in a world of grown-ups, a world so big that it seems to envelop her in its immensity. She grabs onto wax figures of her size, hides behind cotton candy, soars up, propelled in the air by a swing. Does she know that she is going to grow up? This is, perhaps, what Thibaut Derien is asking. He has photographed his daughter for several years, randomly on family trips, moved by this new world, father’s world, as better to retain the childhood, the time which has not yet exactly fled, but which will in time.
Thibaut Derien, Angèle et le nouveau monde
From September 15 through October 10, 2017
Little Big Galerie
45 rue Lepic
75018 Paris
France
