I am a French analog photographer and a Super-8mm filmmaker with Celtic roots and a north African background. I live and work near Paris, France. I have a passion for the grain and spirit of film photography, its accidents, its slow qualities…
My interest lies in onirism, spiritualism and a daydreamed reality of a slow life. The special geography of dreams, the characters you may encounter in them. Ghosts, lighter beings. Memory.
I collaborate regularly with musicians (Piano Magic, Jozef Van Wissem, etc … ), photographers, filmmakers ( Guy Maddin, Friedl Kubelka… ) and fashion stylists as a model, a performer (as a musician, I am “Vanishing Twins” ) and I love to produce artworks for album covers / music videos.
My visual work has been published in several magazines and books / anthologies, shown in Germany, Italy, France, U.K., Lithuania, Slovakia, and it is featured on VOGUE.it.
I recently was asked to join a collective of women artists which was created to organize exhibitions around the world.
I studied at the Glasgow School of Arts, Scotland and have lived in London.
I have a theatre background (former actress and student at Paris Sorbonne Nouvelle and Glasgow University). In photography though, I am mainly a self-taught .
How do you combine the slowness of your music with the fast and furious timeline of certain art of photography, for instance fashion and people portraits?
I can’t relate to most fashion people. Yes, maybe one of the many reasons why is the speed they are caught into. I’m from another time, where fashion doesn’t exist.
Well at least nowadays’ fashion. I can’t really adapt to the speed of this world…
How is your non-commissioned activity related to the commissioned one?
I work on my photography on a daily basis. I am haunted, impulsive and obsessive with images. I won’t wait to be commissioned to create my visions. That’s maybe what draws me apart from a commercial creative.
Where is the “vanishing twins” of your art placed in your home?
I am constantly missing my other half, my other imaginary being.
Most of my time here in Paris I’m a rather nostalgic mind, missing my “In Utero” state. My main dreams include going back into the womb, and being reunited with the dead!
Is a cello playing in that moment or rather some Elisabeth Fraser’s song is spinning – the synths à la Cocteau Twins covering all the sonic spectrum ?
I love the Cocteau Twins and “This Mortal Coil” very much, though I mainly listen to the beautiful silence in my home during the day. Paris is a very loud city, too full of cars, and I enjoy this silent shelter that I’ve built at home.
Which encounters do you normally have in your daily work routine? Please make a portrait of one of these.
My days aren’t alike. I don’t have any work routines really, I work on many things at the same time, at my pace, starting many projects side by side. I guess I try and avoid routine in my work to be able to see it with new eyes each day. I stay and work at home a lot when I’m in Paris. I’m in my head here.
When I go abroad that’s where I am truly happy and available to meet people because I feel free, but then it’s not a routine!
How is hard to start an entrepreneur activity today in your city?
From my perspective, it’s been really hard, since I didn’t grow up in an artist or entrepreneur’s family, so I didn’t have any model to look at, or any older relative to help or encourage me in my path.
I had to build it all myself.
Strength, faith, all.
It takes a long time and a hell of a lot of energy.
What your city is giving to you and vice versa?
I have reached this time again when I want to get away soon, so nothing positive anymore I guess! Or close to nothing. Though I still appreciate Paris very much when I’m around visitors, friends from abroad, who give me a fresh perspective on my city, seeing it with new eyes, going to places I usually don’t often go to.
Paris isn’t such a romantic place for the people who were born here! It’s quite a tough capital you see, and I live in a rather brutal, concrete neighborhood in the north of Paris; it can really nail you after a while when like me, you’re a mind addicted to beauty.
Describe a great happening you had in recent time?
Venezia*!
Can you share your favorite cooking passion?
Simple ones: making healthy smoothies! ( Organic banana and almond milk being my favorite ).
Which is your favourite wine or drink?
Like a kid, I’m badly addicted to soya chocolate drinks. I know it’s bad, and I’m trying to quit. But I feel so complete when I drink this. These past two years I have been introduced to some really great wines though, including Barolo and delicious all natural white wines from Alsace.
Which is your music or the book(s) with you now (and on which kind of side table or desk the book(s) is/are now) ?
” Les Espaces Intérieurs ” by Howard Eisenberg ( parapsychology ), “Double-Vue” by Paul-C. Jagot ( a book about occultism and clairvoyance ) and Cioran “De l’inconvénient d’être né”, they are by my bed, on this little nightstand where there also is an old oil lamp, a candle, a few jewels, and several issues of the beautiful DROME Magazine.
The last album I played was “Heartleap” by Vashti Bunyan.
Which is your current or next music album ?
My music has been all on hold for a long time, because I unfortunately had to go through two important surgeries these past years. But I recently got a new magical music instrument ( a bohemian harp, delivered to me from Berlin), so I’m starting to compose with it now. Its sound is so deep and beautiful. I will perform again at some point, with this harp, my diatonic accordion, my organ, or with just my voice, sung or spoken word.
With my music in general, I just can’t make any promises. My ears are really very fragile and most music venues don’t suit the type of music I want to perform.
Let’s see. I’m still giving myself time, as my visual work has taken over these past years…
In which way do you try to live “slow”, if you like to do so, in a city as yours?
I stay home in my cocoon a lot, because Paris isn’t really a place for a Slow life I think. Though I might soon have, not far from my home, a little piece of land to grow my own vegetables… so that could make me appreciate my life outdoors here a lot better. But my dream is to live by the sea… as soon as possible. Water is my element, its movement… it provides me this inner peace that I need, this sort of hypnotic vibration.
Which is a talent you have and the one you miss?
I know how to make nice nests! I love to arrange homes…I can’t paint. I admire painters endlessly.
What have you learnt from life until now?
I can’t tell you.
*I stubbed upon Jeanne’s pictures at Casa Punto Croce – a secret and private address in Venice where to listen good music, have great inexpensive food and meet such artists as her. While I am editing this interview, my glance lies on a stunning print of her I bought, Blue Mystery.
(the cover portrait of Jeanne is by Daniele Serio)