Quatre Mains / Zonder Handen

Stephanie Lamoline’s Quatre Mains/Zonder Handen is a deeply personal project inspired by the sudden loss of her father. It explores a complex relationship, reflecting on memory, grief, and transformation through the items and photographs he left behind.

The project began when Stephanie discovered a box of Polaroids while clearing out her father’s house. Taken in the 1990s, these photographs captured railway sites where he had worked as an engineer. Moved by these images, she began to create her own photographs using belongings she found in his home. These new constructions were deliberately simple and unmanipulated, allowing the materials to maintain their raw integrity.

The series was eventually published as a two-volume book, combining her father’s Polaroids with her own small-scale installations. This juxtaposition created a subtle conversation between father and daughter. The title of the book, Quatre Mains/Zonder Handen, reflects this relationship. The first part evokes the idea of a four-handed piano duet asking whether it is possible to create harmony with someone who is no longer there. The second part, “Zonder Handen” (Hands Free), recalls the independence of a child declaring, “Look, I can do it without hands!”

The two prints on display, Subtle Recollections of a Joyful Delight and Domino Dancing, are part of this larger series. They showcase Stephanie’s tactile, hands-on approach to photography. In Domino Dancing, rocks illuminated by construction site traffic lights take on vibrant hues of red and green,giving the ordinary a new, unexpected quality. In Subtle Recollections of a Joyful Delight, the dusty reflections of a skylight fall over a flip-flop suspended between a wall and nylon thread, creating a moment of quiet suspension and reflection.

These works highlight the physicality of Stephanie’s process while remaining deeply connected to the themes explored in the book. Quatre Mains/Zonder Handen bridges two lives, two ways of seeing, and creates a unique, transcendent exchange between father and daughter.