Our readers picks #330, Léa Treuil and Matthieu Marre, both tell stories. The first recounts a trip to Ireland, and the second imagines visual tales, inspired by reality.
Léa Treuil
Léa Treuil, 23, turned to photography as a child, capturing the streets of Paris with her father. Now a graduate of ESA 75, an art school in Belgium, the artist develops photographic projects around intimacy and memory. “Photography allows me to express my nostalgic and sensitive side. I capture what makes me vibrate, what makes me feel alive, what touches me,” she says. Produced in 2016, Personne ne va rire (Nobody’s Going to Laugh) tells the story of a trip to Ireland, with a friend, Alice. “We were both barely 19 years old, she recalls. It was our first trip, our first freedoms – our first fears, too. A few years before the trip, Alice became seriously ill and we lost touch with each other. I was scared of the illness. The trip? It was our reunion. Since she has recovered, I know how to appreciate the beautiful things, the important moments even more.” The series, shot in black and white, captures the Irish countryside with a phantasmagorical aura. A poetic way of exorcising fears and celebrating a newfound friendship.
© Léa Treuil
Matthieu Marre
“Each of us speaks only one sentence, which only death can interrupt”
, this quote by the philosopher Roland Barthes in an interview never ceases to fascinate 40-year-old Matthieu Marre. For the past 20 years, the photographer has been developing an aesthetic of his own. “I work in a darkroom to print black and white negatives, exclusively on small formats, and I also make colour and black and white slides, which I use in installations,” he explains. Influenced by literature, the artist imagines intimate visual tales. “L’ogre et Mélusine features two figures, one that frightens me, the other that inspires me,” confides the photographer I don’t believe in the partition of literary genres – separating those that deal with the real from those that take us into the imaginary. For me, the tale is eminently real. Through fantastic figures, it dares to tell what works the being in depth, what it really is. This series is a to-and-fro between figures that do not belong to me, but which say, with accuracy, who I am.” An immersion into a dangerous, sensual and mysterious universe.
© Matthieu Marre
Cover picture: © Matthieu Marre
