Gaëlle Encrenaz and Matisse Guillermin, our readers picks #319 both capture intimacy. The first one freezes the charm of ordinary gestures, and the second one tries to understand her “grandfather “, a transgender woman.
Gaëlle Encrenaz
Gaëlle Encrenaz, a researcher in epidemiology in Bordeaux, developed an early interest in image and literature. It was after spending a year in Montreal that she began to present her own pictures. “I went back to using film, which allowed me to take pleasure in photography, to grow and evolve”, she confides. Favouring an intuitive approach, the artist likes to let herself be surprised by her environment, to observe the recurrences of existence. “I often capture moments of daily life, small personal routines to which we often forget to give importance”, she confides. Les Matins (Mornings, ed.), a deeply intimate series, illustrates this habit. “I started working on this body of work when I met my girlfriend. It is about those mornings when we take the time to stop and appreciate the ordinary,” she adds. An ode to slowness and simple pleasures that we must savour.
© Gaëlle Encrenaz
Matisse Guillermin
“Through my own search for identity, I give a lot of importance to the space surrounding us, to the bodies evolving in these spaces. I like to shake up the limits, to question genders from an artistic and carnal point of view”,
Matisse Guillemin tells us. The 21-year-old photographer discovered the medium during a trip to Malaysia, and has since developed an intimate universe built on observation. In Mon grand-père (My grand-father, ed.), the artist signs the modest portrait of a transgender woman. “One day someone asked me: do you think your sexuality is due to the fact that your grandfather became a woman? From that moment on, I wanted to know more about her. I spent three weeks observing, understanding without ever asking her questions. Always looking from the inside out. She hardly ever goes out, sleeps a lot, doesn’t talk. There is always something hidden, something that creates a barrier, that we don’t understand. Mystery. Photographs are a form of approach. She looked at me, said nothing, and let me continue. In three weeks, we never talked about it”, she says.
© Matisse Guillermin
Cover picture: © Gaëlle Encrenaz
