Nathalie Mazéas : The human in the whole lot
For her twentieth birthday, her boyfriend gave her his outdated Pentax. From then on, Nathalie Mazéas by no means put down her digicam. Beginning out as an actress, she immortalized backstage in theaters and movie shoots, revealing the whole lot that goes on on this virtually parallel universe. These moments are perpetually etched on paper, and infrequently grow to be her current on the end-of-shoot. Over time, she got here to understand that pictures gave her the liberty to be who she was, and that her place was extra behind the lens than in entrance of a digicam or an viewers.
Her need is to free the creativeness, to {photograph} others as she wish to be photographed, and to disclose what makes others so eminently alive, to offer the onlooker a narrative or an emotion.
She tames the body and the sunshine, above all daylight, which fascinates her.
Right this moment, after spendinǵ twenty years primarily photographing actors, she focuses her work, on a way more intimate strategy, whose topic stays the human.
She started by engaged on the nude as a political physique, posing the query of the female in pictures. The consequence: “EN CORPS”, a sequence she constructed round girls aged 50 to 70 posing nude. A black & white movie work, shot in daylight and with none retouching. She then set off on a solitary road-trip within the American West, returning with a fantastic sequence entitled “NO MAN”. The next yr, her vacation spot was Mali. Marked by the imprint left on her by Seydou Keita and Malick Sidibé́, she had the concept of setting off to satisfy artists struggling to make their historical past their very own, and to repair a reminiscence that was being misplaced.
At the moment primarily based in North Brittany, the land of her origins, she is making an attempt to reinvent the panorama.
Her extremely acclaimed work has been exhibited in Arles, Bamako, Paris, Berlin, Aix en Provence, Cerbère and Plougasnou.
www.photo-nathalimazeas.com
Instagram: photomazeas
What was your first photographic set off?
Nathalie Mazéas: Once I was 17, I took a self-portrait, which gave my photographer boyfriend the concept of photographing me. When he noticed the photograph, he mentioned to me: “You’ve bought to take photographs”, however he by no means photographed me!
The person or girl of picture who conjures up you?
Nathalie Mazéas : Annie Leibovitz, Dolores Marat, Diane Arbus, Richard Avedon, Peter Lindberg, Henry Cartier Bresson…
What picture would you wish to have made?
Nathalie Mazéas: Nude John Lennon embracing Yoko Ono, photographed by Annie Leibovitz in 1980, a number of hours earlier than his assassination. Aside from the whole lot that strikes me about this picture, what I like is that, for as soon as, it’s the person who’s bare and never the lady!
Which one moved you essentially the most?
Nathalie Mazéas: La petite fille aux feuilles mortes 1946 by Edouard Boubat. It’s as if, in her costume of useless leaves, she all of a sudden realized that princesses didn’t exist.
And the one which made you indignant?
Nathalie Mazéas: In 2009, Sharon Stone virtually bare on the duvet of Paris Match, with the headline “J’ai 50 ans et alors! What bothers me is making us imagine in one thing that doesn’t truly exist, with a very photoshopped picture. So I believed concerning the illustration of the female in pictures, and determined to start out my “en corps” sequence of girls between the ages of fifty and seventy, bare and unretouched.
A key picture in your private pantheon?
Nathalie Mazéas: My first self-portraits on the age of 17, which is the place all of it started.
A photographic reminiscence out of your childhood?
Nathalie Mazéas: My mom was a photograph bulimic! Her favourite trick was to get my twin and I to pose in entrance of roadside flowerbeds. Two navy sweaters would come out of a hydrangea mattress, and that was it. Each {photograph} grew to become a nightmare.
With no price range restrict, what murals would you dream of buying?
Nathalie Mazéas: A Hans Hartung canvas, for the involvement of the physique.
In your opinion, what’s the one high quality wanted to be a superb photographer?
Nathalie Mazéas: To don’t have any preconceptions, however to be curious, enthusiastic and true to your beliefs.
What, if any, is the key to the proper picture?
Nathalie Mazéas: I don’t know what an ideal picture is.
Who would you wish to {photograph}?
Nathalie Mazéas: Geneviève Fraisse, thinker of female considering.
From the outset of her analysis life, she has aimed to supply “genealogies” or, to borrow a time period from Michel Foucault, to determine “provenances”. Or to hint “lineages” during which the feminist gesture takes on which means past sudden impulses, waves restricted in time, or the catalog of remarkable girls from which to attract inspiration for christening a bus station.
The photographer you’d wish to have your portrait taken by
Nathalie Mazéas : Annie Leibovitz
Vital photograph e-book?
Nathalie Mazéas : Abigail Solomon- Godeau’s e-book on pictures “Chair à Canons” pictures, discourse, feminism. (Édition textuel, 2016) She belongs to the technology of American theorists who, within the Eighties-Nineties, profoundly modified the way in which we take into consideration pictures in its relationship to historical past and present creation.
What was your childhood digicam?
Nathalie Mazéas: A disposable Kodak, a Polaroid.
The one you utilize in the present day?
Nathalie Mazéas: An outdated Pentax, a Canon EOS, a Canon 5D Mark IV.
What’s your favourite drug?
Nathalie Mazéas: Swimming at house in Northern Brittany.
What’s one of the best ways to disconnect?
Nathalie Mazéas: Working at house by the ocean, and swimming.
What’s your private relationship with photos?
Nathalie Mazéas : I spent my childhood inventing tales by slicing out photos from my mom’s magazines. I cherished placing contradictory issues collectively. Photos have at all times been very current in my life. It’s past phrases. A person despatched me a photograph on daily basis for a month of one of many locations I like most on the earth. That was my best declaration of affection.
Your best high quality?
Nathalie Mazéas : Positivism, optimism.
Your newest folly?
Nathalie Mazéas: Breaking by means of the bearing wall of my home to create a panoramic view. It’s extraordinary!
A picture as an example a brand new banknote?
Nathalie Mazéas : Anita Conti’s photograph on the banks of Newfoundland 1952.
The job you wouldn’t have favored to do?
Nathalie Mazéas: Accountant.
And when you hadn’t grow to be a photographer?
Nathalie Mazéas: Dance! I’d have cherished to work with Hofesh Shechter.
Your best skilled extravagance?
Nathalie Mazéas: Having a stool made in a single day for my shoot the subsequent day, for the official portrait of Blaise Compaoré, President of Burkina Faso. I felt that the structure of his throne minimize off his head, and I needed a really human, uncluttered portrait. Once I arrived within the salon the place the shoot was to happen, there was a crowd of photographers ready to see me in motion. I invited him to take a seat on the stool going through the window, whereupon he dismissed all of the photographers and, very amused, adopted all my directions to the letter. The subsequent day in Ouagadougou, rumor had it {that a} white girl together with her digicam had bewitched the president! Now a refugee in Côte d’Ivoire, he has been sentenced in absentia in Ouagadougou to life imprisonment for “complicity in assassinations” and “undermining state safety”.
What do you suppose is the distinction between pictures and artwork pictures?
Nathalie Mazéas: For me, there’s no distinction. It’s the viewer who makes the work, and it’s as much as her or him to resolve!
Which metropolis, nation or tradition do you dream of discovering?
Nathalie Mazéas : Mali, which I’m nonetheless exploring, and Japan.
The place you by no means tire of?
Nathalie Mazéas : Northern Brittany
Your largest remorse?
Nathalie Mazéas: Not assembly Christian Boltanski!
When it comes to social networks, do you favor Instagram, Fb, Tik Tok or Snapchat, and why?
Nathalie Mazéas: Instagram and Fb. Though I’m not very offensive on the networks.
What have digital know-how and smartphones taken away from or dropped at pictures?
Nathalie Mazéas: Smartphones provide billions of prospects and different methods of taking pictures. I took a self-portrait within the bathe in an unlikely place, with the bathe head in a single hand and the smartphone within the different. Digital know-how has enabled me to discover, to attempt, to go additional in my experiments, I’ve let myself go additional, as a result of the financial stakes weren’t the identical. However there’s one other facet to the coin!
Shade or B&W?
Nathalie Mazéas : Each, relying on what I need to say!
Daylight or synthetic mild?
Nathalie Mazéas: I’m an enormous fan of daylight.
Do you favor movie or digital?
Nathalie Mazéas : Movie.
Which is essentially the most photogenic metropolis in your opinion?
Nathalie Mazéas: All cities are photogenic, relying on the sunshine and the place you stand.
If God existed, would you ask him to pose for you, or would you go for a selfie with him?
Nathalie Mazéas: Once I was a child, I bought so bored at mass that he owes me to pose for me.
If I might manage your superb banquet, who can be on the desk?
Nathalie Mazéas: All of the names talked about on this questionnaire, plus a number of musicians.
The picture that represents the present state of the world for you?
Nathalie Mazéas: I don’t have one particularly… however I actually like Darcy Padilla’s work on California Dreamin’, seen at VISA pour l’picture this yr.
What’s lacking in in the present day’s world?
Nathalie Mazéas: Lightness, enjoyable and humor….
If you happen to needed to begin over again?
Nathalie Mazéas : The identical factor, solely higher!
Any final phrases?
Nathalie Mazéas: Heartily.