View of the exhibition Album, Art au centre, Liège (Belgium) – 2021

Video installation – 7 families – 26 min – 2021

HD – 16/9 – 7 projections – Loop
 
 

Invented during the first half of the 19th century, photography was for a long time confined to the portraitist’s studio. The original aim was to capture a specific moment when the family “looks like this”, crystallizes in the vast time of history, before the children grow up and the parents get older. According to his tastes, his means, his vision of things, his social class, one entered a docile body in a collective story.

In this way, in its early days, family photography remained very fixed. It then underwent profound changes as the image of the changes of the family that it immortalizes but also of the technical evolutions that the medium is facing. What happens when the family changes, breaks down, becomes a single-parent one? Between classical poses, old backgrounds and new socio-cultural habits, the artist mixes historical and contemporary codes related to the practice of portraiture. 

By choosing the precise moment when the natural fades behind the artificial, Amélie captures the gestures, facial expressions and signs that are beyond the control of the subjects. Highlighting their filmed expressions, Amélie Berrodier is interested in our social relationship to photography and self-representation. 

Lola Carrel
Translated from French by Amélie Berrodier