Swans at the river Seine2016-2019, Paris/France
Black and White, medium format, film, multiple exposures in camera
“Everyday,
I walk by an island on the River Seine
A flock of swans lives there
I watch their ballet on the water
While they dance
Their daily show
They follow me
Expecting more then just being fed
They expect to be admired
These wild animals
They need to be on a pedestal above the water
To survive their urban life”
ARTIST STATEMENT
I have worked with photography since I was introduced to a camera, age 15. It always felt the camera was an extension of my eyes, brain and heart that I could carry with my hands. I started photographing with an old Hasselblad medium format film camera with 50mm lenses, so most of my work is still done the same way. I like to experiment with film and face the surprises of the results in the darkroom when developing films with multiple exposures on camera, such as with this series.
All my artistic inspirations and references since I was young, in Cinema and Photography, were from France in the 20s to 40s. I was fascinated by everything from Bresson, Godard, Carné to Kertész, Cartier-Bresson, Atget, Man Ray, Le Gray…therefore living in Paris was always a dream.
Years later I married a Frenchman, we moved to Paris with our baby daughter and suddenly I lost my father in a tragic car accident. I mourned alone. We lived close to an island by the Seine where there were flocks of swans living and they kept me company on my daily walks around the island. Their majestic dance made my life in Paris even more fictional.
My intention was to study these animals that called my attention and are so famously known for their grace and elegance. My goal was to portray an ordinary side of their existence in that daily environment, challenging the preconceptions and cliche around swans imagery, and approach them with some type of familiarity and intimacy I believe to have built with them over the years, living an urban life in a dreamy and romantic ideal. As my own relationship to my journey in Paris, which is also implicit in their existence, but also revealing their power to transcend beauty in space and time. The aesthetic I chose was mainly blurred and out of focus as that’s how I felt most days during my journey and it combined to their expression of movement and flow on the water.
