Photography Is An Art Of Command

Featuring Lucile Boiron Words by Nastasia Khmelnitski

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The juxtaposition of life and death becomes one of the main motives in Lucile Boiron’s body of work. Observation is the first technique the photographer exploits, which enables to distinguish the particles otherwise ignored. The beautiful and the repugnant are perceived as one - in a struggle of what is the norm, what is familiar, and how we can accept the alien or the unknown.

The additional layer is Lucile’s interest in women from her family, whom she photographs while aiming attention at the body parts with an acute point on the details using her unique color palette. We speak with Lucile about this encounter of the viewer with the unordinary and her main interest in photography.

Lucile Boiron is a Paris-based French photographer who graduated from The École Nationale Supérieure Louis-Lumière. Lucile’s series Womb was a recipient of the Libraryman Award and became her first book printed in the first edition of 500 copies and developed into an exhibition. In Womb, Lucile presents parts of the body and researches the idea of exposing the natural and the known in a most carnal manner. Lucile decides to establish a focus on the part of the whole, which appearance is seemingly unrecognizable at first. Lucile remembers when the book was presented at the NY Art Book Fair, “some people who barely opened the book closed it immediately [...]. It’s interesting seeing how hard it is for us to be confronted with our future decay.”

‘Photography is an art of command: taking small parts of the world, assimilating them, digesting them, and making them ours. It gives the illusion that I can keep a hold on things.’

I Am

How did you enter the world of photography? What do you think it takes to develop a unique visual direction, and what leads to it? 

As a child, I couldn't stand seeing myself frozen in photographic family albums. Later, like many teenagers, photography became a tool for self-assessment. Now I still consider it as an empowerment tool. Photography is an art of command: taking small parts of the world, assimilating them, digesting them, and making them ours. It gives the illusion that I can keep a hold on things.

‘When I take pictures, it feels like I’m watching the world through a microscope. Bodies and things lose their 'corporeality' to become pure matter. It suddenly moves them into a new dimension.’

An Observer

A photographer is a researcher and an observer who is extremely sensitive to the surrounding world. As a practice for actors when one needs to remember, with their eyes closed, every small detail there was in a certain situation, the photographer creates a story starting from observation leading to the digestion of the information and finally to a new design of the perceived. What are some topics which interest you enough to observe them but haven’t yet seen the light as photographs? 

When I take pictures, it feels like I’m watching the world through a microscope. Bodies and things lose their 'corporeality' to become pure matter. It suddenly moves them into a new dimension. I am thinking of a Merleau-Ponty’s phrase from Phenomenology of Perception, which sums up this idea quite well, "A living body seen from too close, and lacking any background [...] is no longer a living body, but rather a material mass as strange as the lunar landscape”. In the end, there is no more individuality, no more gender, only fragments, which could be pieces of a single body, and skin, like the film inside my camera - it becomes the place where inside and outside could meet.

‘My pictures express this double movement of life and death existing in each of us. Incorporation and rejection, beauty, and ugliness - there are all these contradictions.’

The Female Body

From photographing women in your family to series on the topic of plastic surgery you raise a discussion of the representation of the female body, of the carnal, in an exploratory manner. What attracts you in the body and flesh? 

In my work, bodies can be seen as a metaphorical and psychological subject matter. My pictures express this double movement of life and death existing in each of us. Incorporation and rejection, beauty, and ugliness - there are all these contradictions. The states of wavering are a part of my subject even more so than questioning female representation.

‘When we presented books at the NY Art Book Fair, some people who barely opened the book closed it immediately as it probably seemed pornographic or extremely violent. It’s interesting seeing how hard it is for us to be confronted with our future decay.’

Libraryman Award

The series Womb was a recipient of the Libraryman Award eventually, developing to become an exhibition and a book edition of 500 copies. What was most memorable about the book release? 

In 2019, I won the Libraryman Prize and showed these images for the first time to Tony Cederteg. We built diptychs with the same desire to play on the sensitive dimension of certain associations and the reaction they can generate. When we presented books at the NY Art Book Fair, some people who barely opened the book closed it immediately as it probably seemed pornographic or extremely violent. It’s interesting seeing how hard it is for us to be confronted with our future decay.

‘I started to use a very long focal length to be closer to their bodies, and I had the feeling that I had discovered them via a new dimension: something both carnal and disturbing - bodies in all their physiological reality.’

Womb

The research of the body, of the physicality, and the form of the flesh inside and out is a prominent motif in the book. What fascinates you in the visual appearance of the flesh? 

For the past four years, I regularly took pictures of women in my family. It became a pretext to explore how we can represent the female body by leaving the usual patterns. In the beginning, I just pictured them in recurring situations such as meals, naps, when they had just woken up; in summary, when they were experiencing a form of ‘letting go’, forgetting social representations. Then, I started to use a very long focal length to be closer to their bodies, and I had the feeling that I had discovered them via a new dimension: something both carnal and disturbing - bodies in all their physiological reality. So, I decided to confront these truncated portraits with organic matter still life.

Upcoming Projects

What are your plans for this year? What are you working on right now?

Recently, I've been collecting archive photographs from the internet, taken before and after cosmetic surgeries, found on medical websites. These pictures, taken out of context, can be reminiscent of Palaeolithic Venus or Greco-Roman statues with absent members. Then, fragmented bodies turn into abstract, curved, or flat shapes of flesh. Following this initial work of documentation, I produced my own pictures in an operating room with a plastic surgeon, trying to keep in mind this idea of transfiguration.