A healing path
A healing path is a story about Marie's rehabilitation process, during which she became deeply aware of the power of love emanating from herself, which also played a huge role in uniting her family members. As Marie writes in her diary, “All the love that comes out of this accident, it’s unbelievable.” Marie went through a devastating experience of her leg being burnt and the time spent lying in the hospital in Paris for a lengthy recovery. The process became not only a physical journey but also a mental one that enabled Marie to reach a better understanding of her story as revealed through written words in her diary and was captured on camera.
We speak with Pauline and Marie about working on this photographic narrative that emerged from the revelation of a personal experience and sharing it with a close friend. The story offers Marie’s determination to share memories and authentic feelings of love and fear, strength and pain to be captured and preserved. Pauline explains the process of finding the right frames and working with an analog camera, “[...] developing isn’t only about technically revealing an image; it’s a whole play with darkness and time, gentleness and patience to let out a moment captured in light, as a tangible image. In its symbolism, it’s like keeping a physical and tangible trace of the present that has already vanished. The same goes for our wounds, which transform with time and memory.”
‘I was so touched by how much she was glowing and how much strength would spread out of her, while feeling how her last months did impact her deeper than visible. But from the outside, too, her body was telling a new story and a new battle, and so much sensitivity was coming out of it. I was absolutely stunned by how beautiful that was.’
⎯ Pauline Raybaud
Before the project is created and the story is formed, there’s a narrative that preoccupies the mind to be shared later. How did you meet, and what ignited this narrative to come to life?
Pauline: We are childhood friends with Marie and have known each other for quite some years. The narrative unfolded in the most organic and true way, very naturally, when we first saw each other after her hospitalisation. First, as a friend, I was so touched by how much she was glowing and how much strength would spread out of her, while feeling how her last months did impact her deeper than visible. But from the outside, too, her body was telling a new story and a new battle, and so much sensitivity was coming out of it. I was absolutely stunned by how beautiful that was. In my work, I love to portray that realness in people, both in their wounds and in their strength. In French, we would say “a nue,” like having ourselves presented from our inner self, nude, without artifices or hiding. I told Marie it would be an honour to capture all this while she expressed that she would like to keep a visible memory, like a trace, of this moment of her healing process of her body and state of mind.
Marie: When thinking of this project and sharing my story with Pauline, I wanted it to be as authentic to myself as possible. This is why I chose to directly deep dive into the essence of the purest of my feelings: those I wrote in my diary. I never knew those lines were going to be shared or read one day, but it was important for me to reveal them for Pauline to understand what needed to be captured.
‘I spent my new year in the small room, 21, in the intensive burns care unit of Paris. Actually, I don’t really know where to start. Start again from my accident? My daily routine at the hospital? The feeling of burning? Or the understanding that it’s in pain that we can obtain love. All the love that comes out of this accident, it’s unbelievable. I appreciate this last night with my hair.’
‘I wanted Pauline to capture the love that spread all around me thanks to this accident. I showed Pauline all the love I was given, all the love that made me survive and that helped my legs heal.’
⎯ Marie Pigott
It's extremely challenging to reveal the personal experience and the healing process to the public. Speaking about this process from physical and mental perspectives, what were some of the main points discussed to start working on this intimate story and prepare a setup?
Marie: This accident has been tough in so many ways: seeing my mom crying, watching the sadness in my brother’s eyes, the total dependency on others to do as simple things as switching on and off a light, the pain of the wounds, the addiction to medicines, having my head shaved while I was under anesthesia, not being able to stand up, walk and run, losing my decency upon nurses, without even mentioning the pain I was enduring every single minute because of my wounds. But this is not what I wanted Pauline to portray. I wanted Pauline to capture the love that spread all around me thanks to this accident. I showed Pauline all the love I was given, all the love that made me survive and that helped my legs heal.
Pauline: The narrative unfolded from what Marie felt like sharing with me and the camera. She talked about wounds but also about love, self-love, and what is shared with others. It was Marie’s first time revealing her wound, and it was very important to me to let her have the space and comfort to reveal her body in her own way. So we started smoothly, in my apartment, between songs and a long talk, to take off layers of clothes and slowly follow the daylight going into the night while unfolding the story from standing in the living room, lying down in a bed, 'nue,' like Marie’s last months. Everything was so subtle, and I wanted to be very attentive to Marie’s rhythm and when she would be ready to let her wound and body be seen — simple and raw.
I had to follow and gently capture what she offered, be patient, and carry with the body being revealed. It’s like witnessing a leaf-thinning where the notion of wound and healing are balancing and mirroring one another. And in the middle of all this is Marie lying down in soft cotton sheets and transparent fabrics, radiant with emotions, peace, and endurance. It’s a question of revealing the unseen by allowing space and time for it to appear, just like you observe the picture coming to life while developing film. The image shapes itself slowly, between darkness and light. The whole process of analogue is actually linked to this narrative.
‘With photography, and analogue photography especially, the notion of time is very important already in its process and development. It’s very symbolic, the contact that analogue film has with time and light: developing isn’t only about technically revealing an image; it’s a whole play with darkness and time.’
⎯ Pauline Raybaud
The topics of memory and change are presented in the form of healing and the concept of beauty (as perceived by the subject and the viewer). There is also an idea of covering and revealing the wound, the feeling of comfort in a safe environment of an apartment, and the softness of fabrics chosen that protect from any possible painful experience. Could you speak more about the main themes and the technical side of the shooting process?
Pauline: With photography, and analogue photography especially, the notion of time is very important already in its process and development. It’s very symbolic, the contact that analogue film has with time and light: developing isn’t only about technically revealing an image; it’s a whole play with darkness and time, gentleness and patience to let out a moment captured in light, as a tangible image. In its symbolism, it’s like keeping a physical and tangible trace of the present that has already vanished. The same goes for our wounds, which transform with time and memory.
This project englobes change in these different forms while it speaks about the inner process of healing, accepting change visually and mentally, and allowing feelings to become tangible and somewhere kept as an eternal souvenir. The project was shot on a soft and old Contax Quartz for its subtle grain and two different Portra films. First in ISO 400 as the wound wasn’t revealed yet, and we started behind curtains in a blue deemed natural light, before moving to 800 when the sun was fading, her protective splint removed, and the colors of her skin revealed. A fine grain film matched the subtlety of the moment and embraced the color scheme of her skin and the vibration in her eye.
‘There are moments with and moments without. Some days I don’t care, and somewhere I deeply wonder why… I hope to be able to rise from my ashes and not be scared in the morning to burn myself with my tea.’
⎯ Marie Pigott
During the time spent in the intensive burn care in Paris, Marie, you were writing your feelings and experiences in the diary. What was the most memorable moment or line you decided to share with Pauline to make sure the essence is captured in the story?
Marie: I wrote :
"There are moments with and moments without. Some days I don’t care, and somewhere I deeply wonder why… I hope to be able to rise from my ashes and not be scared in the morning to burn myself with my tea."
But I also wrote:
"All the love that emanates from this accident is unbelievable. I feel like I'm in an out-of-space bubble."
I wanted to share both aspects of this story: the pain and the wound on one side, love and healing on the other. Both sides are a part of this healing journey. But I wanted to share specifically about love. Thanks to this accident, my family talked to each other again after years of dispute between some of them. They gathered for me as if love was beyond anything, as if they knew it was the only thing that would appease me. And this notion of love and togetherness was the most important for me to share with Pauline and to remember from all this.
Pauline, your work encompasses an approach to research that comes both from literature and arts due to your studies for the MA degree in Literature and BA in Fine Arts. You also have the experience of being a performer and a model. In what way does different expertise help to better understand the subject you work with and eventually present the story through your prism and angle?
Pauline: My practice indeed digs into several forms of expression, balancing between different mediums to embrace what each form can bring to the other in their merging. My literature background always nourishes my narratives with a tendency for poetics and use of words but also in the composition of storytelling, how to give birth to a narration from a primal idea or emotion, and then how to extend it in a visual form either with photography, film, or performance. And the performance, undoubtedly, makes me have a deeper approach to the body and how it speaks but also to the people and how they have their own ways of expressing themselves. Because performing, either with dance or acting, is all about making the body the tool of your expression as the visual envelope and memory of your emotions, and it’s a very vibrant and sensible tool. And when you learn how to explore in its depth, I feel that you can open up with a lot more sensitivity and empathy to how others express their own body. So, yes, I think that having expertise in these different fields brings to my projects and stories a singular prism, halfway between what can be felt and seen, the tangible and the sensible, always punctuated with a dash of poetry.
Could you provide a sneak peek into what will be your next project or what you're working on right now?
Pauline: Thanks to all these different mediums I work with, I'm very often between more than one project. Currently, I’m working on the editing of a performative short film of my friend and artist Philomène Amougou, following her journey of exploring her grandmother’s legacy, performed in her hometown in Cameroon. It’s a project that's very close to my heart and another amazingly human story to share. Also, I'm developing a series of short films portraying several women, digging into heart stories and the difficulty of expressing what is behind the "yes, I’m good, everything is ok, but… no, never mind, it’s ok." That "but" that sounds like frustration is what I want to dig out from different stories and profiles, mixing different narratives between true and fictional stories, each interpreted by different actresses, based on how much they recognise each other in the given narrative. It’s a project about digging deeper into the inner self to pull out what can't be expressed with words but with a glance, a movement, a moment. On that same fine line between what is given to be seen and what is sensed to be told.
