Photographs and texts produced by students.
Artistic intention thought and led by Valentine Vermeil, photographer.
Creation time carried out over 22 hours spread over a week in January and May 2018.
With Béatrice Ladreyt, professor of French and socio-cultural education.
Au Center for Forestry and Agricultural Studies, Montélimar (26).
Restitution May the 4 2018.
Intervention carried by Stimultania Photography center
Support by the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes Region within the framework of the Découverte Région, Passeurs de culture call for projects.
What binds you to others? What brings you together or separates you? What makes you an individual? An invitation to explore the relationships that exist between men.
Valentine Vermeil, photographer, accompanies young people in creation. With her, over three intensive days, they think and then create the photograph that tells the story of the chosen angle. For some groups, the idea slowly germinates, for others it is full ownership. The students work independently, while following Valentine's practical and aesthetic advice. The final form being thought out from the start (leporellos), the construction of the images follows certain specifications.
In the end, some will speak of friendship, love, or a relationship with nature. Others will evoke more surprising links: the first name (Isis), the struggle or the suffering. Three young girls want to address the issue of battered women, of the link necessary to "save themselves". The subject is delicate, the treatment a little awkward but it will have made it possible to address in particular the difficulty of representing certain subjects in the most accurate way.
The construction of a sound slide show concludes the experience, bringing together the portraits of young people who come to merge with each other to form a whole and sounds recorded spontaneously by some of the students - a mixture of slam, piano and voice.
« When I received the intervention proposal for the workshop at CEFA by Stimultania, Béatrice had already chosen the theme of links. I immediately thought of the object of the restitution, namely a “leporello” accordion book in which all the pages, from the first to the last, are taken by the hand. The common thread was found. Reflect, anticipate, verbalize, support, create and then restore. The goal was to get the students to work on their own mind maps. So I began to reflect with them on the richness of this word and all the avenues to explore when it comes to expressing, through the image, a feeling or a point of view. Small groups were formed and then ideas germinated. It was now necessary to manage them while respecting their spontaneity and their ideas. »
Valentine vermeil
Production: 2 leporellos 14 × 21 cm closed, 14 × 196 cm open, R / G and R color printing only on 150 g matt paper, 30 copies of each, distributed to students, CEFA, artist, Stimultania. Graphics: Valentine Vermeil. Publication: May 2018/3 'sound slide show, screened during the restitution in May 2018 and broadcast on the internet. Editing: Valentine Vermeil. / installation of leporellos and live performance (slam, piano, reading texts) within the CEFA in May 2018. Scenography and installation: the students, Valentine Vermeil, Béatrice Ladreyt, Stimultania.
Valentine vermeil, born in 1974, is a freelance photographer based in Marseille. “Winner of the Staff Prize in 2012, Valentine Vermeil has been developing documentary practice since 2004 that reflects the diversity and complexities of the contemporary world. Produced in South-East Asia, his series “Épiceries de nuit” (2006-2007) is a fascinating testimony to an essential element of living together: small street shops. Other series like Non-verbal expressions (-2002 2004) and Arcanda, the gesture at work in rural areas (2008) are interested in the body as a place of emotion and in the gesture as language. Imbued with humanism, her gaze is both vis-à-vis the people and situations that she photographs and at their side since her photographs convey with finesse the experience of each of her encounters. Series Bab El follows his extended stays in Israel and his desire to reveal the depth of reality. “My photographs deliberately move away from the media treatment and imaginaries aroused by this region. My purpose is to shed light on what unites individuals, such as links and belonging to a group, whether social, ethnic or religious, ”she explains. The series thus alternates portraits and landscapes, street scenes and religious fervor, modernity and rites. Within the corpus, Valentine Vermeil focuses particularly on female figures, which illustrate the rapid changes in Israeli society, such as this bride in traditional dress observing herself in a pink plastic mirror, no doubt “Made in China ”. Clement Dirié, art historian for the Neuflize vie collection. "
