Exhibition from September 10 to October 12, 2019. In the Audacieuse-Galerie, 50 rue Ancienne in Carouge GE.
Interview
Can you tell us what the Return to Carnival series is?
This photographic series explores the traditional carnival around the world: From the Austrian Alps to the Spanish Basque Country to the Cajun Prairie in Louisiana, from the northern coast of France to the remote islands off the coast of Guinea-Bissau. In each of these carnivals, the masks and costumes perpetuate centuries-old traditions, tying people deeply to their roots. Carnival invites them to transcend and even rebel against their daily lives and their environment.
Through this ritualistic performance, the carnival goers embody animals and spirits, mythical beasts. They choose from a vast cast of historical figures with local significance. Celebrants revisit the seasonal rites of their ancestors, as well as cyclical transitions as the opposite sides of the human condition: winter and spring, sterility and fertility, life and death, chaos and order.
How did you come to create this series of photographs?
I started the project of doing a series on traditional musicians in Brazil. After visiting the state of Pernambuco in the northeast of the country, I quickly realized that a lot of the music takes place during Carnival. I returned to Pernambuco five times over eight years and published the book A Flower in the Mouth.
I wondered what carnival was like in other areas. That is why, in the years that I was unable to travel to Brazil, I began to visit other countries to see the similarities and differences in the expression of this important cultural festival. This turned into the series Return to Carnival: Rites, Roots, Rebels.
How do you work with your images?
I only select the more traditional and folkloric carnivals to photograph. I work directly with the community or with a local ethnographer to identify which carnivals still maintain connections to their ancestral past. Then, I get involved in the community days or weeks before the event. I meet the participants and photograph the preparations and backstage of the Carnival. This allows me to understand the carnival in terms of costumes as well as the devotion of those who contribute to the celebration each year.
During the carnival, I usually go to the place where the participants are getting dressed and photograph them as informally as possible while they celebrate. I always share the photos with the community for their uses, their pleasures, and for generations to come.
