ALBUM

Invented in the first half of the 19^th century, photography has been confined to the studio of the portrait photographer for a long time, a studio where the upper classes come to sustain their dynastic fiber. At that time, grasping the family identity seems to be at the core of the concerns when parents, father and mother, take a place on each side of the image and surround their offspring. It is a matter of capturing a precise moment when family “ resembles this ”, crystalizes itself in the vast time of the story, before the children grow up and the parents get old. According to one’s tastes, means, vision of things, social class, one gave a docile body its place in a collective story. No family without a family photo.

At the beginning, family photography thus remains conventional. But since the end of the 1960s, it has been undergoing profound changes like the family mutations that it immortalizes, but also technical evolutions of the support.

For Art au Centre #7, Amélie Berrodier explores this practice and its evolution with the video installation entitled Album. Between classic poses, ancient background and new sociocultural habits, the artist combines historical and contemporary codes connected to the portrait practice. It is yet mostly a matter of highlighting the family ties that are specific to each composition, just like the gap between the pose initially adopted for the photograph and the behaviors – laughs, embraces, estrangements – engendered by the long duration of the video. While these photographs are usually fixed, they here come to life by extending the duration of the shot, as to brave the death of a represented moment.

This project was supported by the DRAC and the Auvergne Rhône-Alpes region.