My instagram photographs are populated with characters. They inhabit the places I have orchestrated for them.
They are always people I know. Usually they are people I have a close relationship with. It’s like there has to be a certain confidence between the individual and me, that we’re close, and that I can show something very personal about the person, something very intimate and familiar.
Just as with my images of meals or landscapes, I often let myself be taken away by the lighting, the attitudes, the colors, and the blend of all of these things; then I give some directions: the person should back up, turn around, not move, and then finally I take the photo.
As you can see in the previous articles (if you have had a chance to read them!), I tend to categorize everything (which isn’t always a good thing), and for portraits it’s the same. There are photos of my friends on their wanderings, family pictures, and self portraits.
The pictures of my friends are the most common, and they are constantly before my eyes engaged in all sorts of compositions, with every step they make over every colored surface they travel, and suddenly I capture them with my intrepid camera.
Photos of my family are very rare. I think in fact there might only be one on my Instagram (unless you count photos of my cat), but I still put it into a category because it’s a picture of a rare and special moment that I am particularly fond of. Since I only see my family rarely, I needed this photograph, since it perfectly illustrates the affection and tenderness we all feel for one another.
Finally, as for my self-portraits, they are kind of like exercise, or the application of ideas that come to me when I am alone and there is no one else to work on them with me. Mostly, these are simple gestures that might evoke other image-concepts.
I am truly passionate about the human form, the way the human body occupies a space, with its gestures, what it gives off and shows when you first glimpse it. That’s why I find it interesting to address these questions with Instagram and this idea of a quasi-instantaneous image, like the way a body will inhabit a photograph, how others perceive this image of this body, and the instant in which it was captured.
Also, Instagram really represents a new way to take photographs: each user orchestrates his or her daily reality, lending to the image his or her own sense of what’s real. I like this idea that everyone can be a photographer even without the credentials, believing in his or her own images and communicating their truth with those who view them.
I hope I haven’t annoyed you too much with my naive mumblings and that you have found my thoughts just a bit interesting.
Lucie Malbéqui
Student at the Fine Arts Institute in Lyon
http://epidemiologie.tumblr.com/ (site under construction)
http://ink361.com/clotildeboisrenard
http://instagram.com/clotildeboisrenard
https://www.facebook.com/luciemalbequi