For Edith, shadow is the place from which everything emerges, it is the territory of the apparition. For a photographer of the body, it is not a question of ‘the appearance’, but ‘the apparition’, the occurrence of the body as a perpetual birth.
It is a pact with light, seeking in every moment it arises, in suspended time, the essential instant.
In a large number of photos, the skin is touched, kneaded, covered in earth or handprints.. Everything happens as if the model aspires to become the statuary of its own body, to completely change appearance. Never is it decorative and always it seems to suggest an impulse coming from inside.
To forcefully declare the vital impulse that makes us exist, Edith does not hesitate to use the paradoxical artifice of theatricality. The make-up on the faces or bodies, far from hiding their profound reality, transforms the evanescence of the pose, the transience of the expression to an intrinsic presence. In a series like « Shamrodia » in 2015, in the ‘masks’ of 2011 and many others even the skin of the model has been coated with floury or earthy materials as a primitive make-up giving the body or the face the appearance of an ancient statue. This covering-up of the body takes us away for a moment from the reference to the photography of « nude » and all its conventions. And the evidence is: Edith is of the family of sculptors, or at least she knows how to translate in her photos the gesture of the clay modeller kneading earthy matter as the sacred affirmation of the stonemason positioning a posed body at the forefront of space. It would be absurd to believe that the photographer builds her personal world only through a face-to-face contact with the living model. Her perspective is developed also through admiration of the works of the past. The photographer knows what it is to be a sculptor and Edith talks to us also of the upright idol, the breath of the Phidias’ Ilisos and the passion of Bernini.
The works of Edith tell us with a singular force of the dangerous and painful fight of the being to whom living is a perpetual resurrection. Far from facile aesthetics, they speak to us of the essence of every living being. The work of art is a journey and through the series of photographs, tirelessly, stubbornly, a deeply passionate reflection leads us to recognise the age-old struggle against oblivion.
Hervé Duetthe
Biography
Edith was born in 1973 in France She lives and works in the Paris area
She started taking photographs at the age of 12. Three years later, she joined the A.F.O.M.A.V. (association for audio-visual studies). Her teacher, Jean-Claude Lefranc taught her traditional methods and techniques of photography. During 3 years of training, Edith worked on unexpected combinations of different parts of the body where one finds both shadow and discreet range of light. At the same time, Edith did several photo shoots; she met both Marc and Brigitte Enguerand of the « Enguerand-Bernand » agency, as well as Pierre-Anthony Allard of the « Harcourt » studio.
Several exhibitions then marked the progress of her career; first in the studio where she worked, then at the international photography fair at Bièvres (78) - she received the 1st prize "Laurent Biancani" - followed by many Parisian galleries (Gallery Daguerre, Gallery Nesle, Gallery Ars in fine, Gallery Duchamp...).
She participated in several group exhibitions including: « et la femme créa l’homme » in l’Espace Belleville in Paris (Commissioner, Francis Parent); « George Sand, interprétations 2004 » at Les Cordeliers in Chateauroux, (36) where she showed with Ben, Cueco, Erró, Ernest Pignon-Ernest...
In 2004, Edith started moving away from traditional photography and began experimenting with installation projects. She created « l’homme » and « bas relief », a daring synthesis between photography and sculpture, shown in Magny-en-Vexin (95).
In 2006 and 2007, in the context of « Lumieres d’octobre », she installed monumental works in the heart of two neighbourhoods of Ermont (95), « Mains des habitants du quartier passerelles carreaux » and « regard des habitants du quartier des espérances ».
In 2009 and 2010, she showed a photographic projection « limites des habitants du 3ème » at the Dialogos Gallery and the City Hall of the 3rd arrondisement of Paris.
On the occasion of 2009 Women's Day, she created a a project with the women from the neighbourhood of le Bois de l’étang à la Verrière (78) « auto-portraits de femmes » and in 2010, with children of the same neighbourhood, she created « espace dans mon quartier ».
Edith was invited from April 2010 to February 2011, to develop an art project within the framework of a residence in the Chaplin StudioLAB # in Mantes la Jolie (78). The length of residency – almost a year - allowed her to develop several themes likely to motivate the local inhabitants to participate fully in this project. As a follow-on from these encounters, Edith invited people to reflect on what comes across from other peoples’ perspective and point-of-view.
From September 2012 to June 2013, she directed a follow-on work phase on « le regard de l’autre » in residence at Rambouillet (78).
In 2015 for the Oksebo association, she showed in duo with Cécile Laissus « les assoiffés » at the Chateau of La Roche-Guyon (95), a work which questions us about the way we look at that half of humanity who are forced to live without clean, drinkable and accessible water.
For several years, Edith has provided artistic interventions for the association "la Source" created in 1991 by the painter and sculptor Gérard Garouste.