Les protestants (photographies)

2005

series of 6 black and white photographs

variable dimensions

This series of photos is based on portraits taken from the family albums of people filmed in the video THE PROTESTANTS, who live among the portraits of their forefathers, to which they constantly make reference. Even today we feel the rigidity of these portrait-models in their bodies. The cropping and enlargement of photos sharpens the purpose of these models: that of putting the greatest possible distance between the viewer and their inner self; not to offer a glimpse of any detail that might allow an observer to site the model outside of the role he wishes to incarnate: that of the austere Protestant bourgeois, and, when required, that of the disci- plined soldier. It is an ideal of beauty that is based on sobriety and self-control. The photograph challenges this body, which it simulta- neously reveals and masks. Arms are crossed across the chest, the jacket is stiffened to the point of looking like a piece of armour. The body becomes a frontier, at the centre of the relation to the Other, but it is presented as an obstacle, a defensive wall. It is the wall itself that allows us to assume the fragilities and weaknesses it tries to mask.