Présentation
"When Rimbaud, in a letter to Paul Demeny of May 15, 1871 exclaims "I am another", the poet expresses the universal paradox of artistic creation. The one that comes from the guts, from the inside, so deep that it seems to have been breathed from the outside. Behind its extraordinary character, hours of hard work, understanding and learning to control first. Especially in the case of portraits, where the body is then only a puppet, a rag puppet that doubles in the real world the imagination of the one who manipulates them. When it comes to self-portraits, this relationship is often distorted, how to split between the front and the back of the lens? How to keep the reins by letting go. Finally, to understand oneself, isn't it necessary to put oneself in the Other's skin?
Following this problematic, Sophie Boss takes us on a journey from within through a double reflection on the self.
First of all violent, this realization of a body that changes, moves and mutates with each cliché, without any apparent stability. Photographic grafts that one would almost want to reject at first glance. It is illogical when a woman's head in its grace and lightness is placed on a body all in virility. It is a matter of incomprehension in this effigy theater where separated bodies oscillate between morbid immobility and renewal of vital dynamics. Some clichés seem to cry out "Sophie is dead, long live Sophie! ».
From this disturbing strangeness is born a reinforcement of the dramatic expression of the senses and feelings. Surprise, fear, sadness, can be read more acutely in the photographer's face, underlined by the echo of the bodies on display. Thus masked and anonymous, the models are freer to express the spectrum of emotions without limiting themselves to the simple embarrassment of nudity. Reciprocal and intimate exchange where one hides in order to give herself up and the others, in drag, are freed.
A pact is created at the heart of this role-playing game where "I become you and you become me", whatever our differences, they are now blurred, blurred. This repeated communion ends up going beyond the sacred couple of the model and the artist. It is the whole assembly that seems to merge into a humanity that is unique and diverse at the same time. These bodies, this body, is you, is me. «
Melissandre L.