Behind the Neutral Face

Art critic Julija Palmeirao in conversation with the artist duo 

Elsa Parra & Johanna Benaïnous

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I recall the sense of being deeply moved when I first saw their photographs in a group show at the H Gallery in Paris. Since then, I kept seeing the artists elsewhere, including the international contemporary art fair “Paris Photo” and their solo show at the “La Forest Divonne” gallery. There is this peculiar feeling that comes over me when looking at their work: gazing out intently from the scenes frozen up in an unsettling silence, their subjects evoke a paradoxical mix of modesty and eroticism. The photographic scenes are utterly familiar, as if conjured up by my own memory, yet at the same time eerie, as if emanating from a parallel universe. What do their faces are trying to convey? Melancholy? Promise? Reproach? Boredom? I decided to talk to the artists about their collaborative work and their creative journey.

First of all, thank you two for agreeing to do this interview. I’d like to start with the very beginning of your collaborative career: when did you start making art together?

Elsa: I drew and painted a lot from an early age. I happened to grow up in a family of highly creative parents who also worked together, only as architects. When I was 6, my mother introduced me to the particularly beautiful parts of the city of Bayonne where I learned drawing and painting until the age of 18. In my high school I had the option to study visual arts, so I chose photography. I took self-portraits and pictures of myself with friends. Then I naturally moved on to the art studies in higher education: one year at the School of Fine Arts in Rueil-Malmaison, then 2 years at La Cambre in Brussels, which I graduated with the 1st degree in Photography, and in 2011 I joined the Arts-Déco, Paris.

Johanna: I started practicing photography at the age of 13, and it soon turned into my great passion. I too have explored this medium by portraying myself with friends. This became a natural means of self-expression for me, and I would spend all my free time photographing. I loved creating aesthetically moving universes and developing narratives around these stagings. At the age of 18 I entered the National School of Fine Arts, Paris, where I studied with Eric Poitevin for 5 years.

In 2014, we were both accepted into the same exchange program in New York at the highly regarded School of Visual Arts. We did not know each other at that time yet, but were both 4th year students at Arts-Déco and Beaux-Arts respectively. We met at School on the first day of the semester and struck an immediate acquaintance.

As we explored New York City together, our acquaintance developed into a strong friendship. We used to help each other with our photo projects and the occasionally boring technical classes at School – assignments would become much more fun when done together. By helping each other out, we came to know each other better and learned about the medium of photography.

The urban theatre of New York, and particularly the working-class neighbourhoods of Brooklyn, acted as the vast grounds for our explorations and encounters. It is in these neighbourhoods that we began to observe people in the street and open up to these lively and diverse identities.

Upon our coming back to France, all we could think of was how to return to New York, and this became the first pretext that motivated us to start creating together. The collective artistic project was a truly good reason for such a return, so we launched “A Couple of Them”, a project that we carried out over the period of two years, during our several trips back to New York.

This new project has started taking up so much space in our lives, that it became obvious that it was now time to put those art degrees to good use and present ourselves as an artist duo.

In 2015, our joint graduation project received the “Congratulations” from the jury of Beaux-arts de Paris, which allowed us to exhibit a year later at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in 2016. Subsequently, this exhibition opened many doors for us.

How would you describe the experience of working as an artist duo?

Elsa: It is truly enriching because it’s an ongoing exchange of ideas, inspiration and experiences. It is also rather demanding because we have to put our Egos aside and think about our common vision. It is what we call a ‘third eye.’ This way, the creative process becomes smooth and we quickly understand where the other is coming from, and what is our respective take on things. We have rather complementary and interchangeable roles during the work process.

Your photography is rather moving. It makes me feel like I am in a movie because your scenographic story-telling. How do you come up with those stories? Who makes the decisions on the scenography? How do you decide who gets to be in the shot?

The elements of these stories emerge naturally from the specific images, and we piece them together like a magic puzzle.

First, we choose the setting and then project a character into it. The addition of light creates a particular atmosphere from which come the character’s attitude and emotion. When put together, all these staged elements allow us to tell a story and create dramatic tensions.

We decide on the final sets together and then, during the act of photography, we put the performative dimension into play. When portraying each other this way, we want these scenes to represent the entire essence and truth of the characters’ lives. There are no rules apart from believing in the characters we embody to the extent of letting ourselves be carried away by them. We want each photograph to offer some additional clues about our characters. The cinematic effect is created through the assemblages of images from the same stories, sometimes accompanied with still lifes and landscapes.

We frame our double portraits together. For example, one of us would compose the shot while other would pose in it, and when we are both happy about what we see, we step inside the frame, play the characters and sett off the shutter with a remote.

I came up with an idea to make this interview after seeing your current exhibition at Galerie La Forest Divonne, Paris. How did this series of medically and cosmically themed images come about, and why? What are you trying to communicate with it?

This was a carte blanche offered by Gael Charbau, the artistic director of Universcience. Ahead of its temporary closure due to the planned renovation works, Palais de la Découverte and its director were looking for a photographer to document their stock. We were selected to be the archival photographers of the Palais who would follow up the work Robert Doisneau did back in 1948.

After having surveyed the Palais several times, we were got access not only the public spaces so emblematic of the Palais, but also its backstage closed off to the visitors: offices, carpentry workshops, laboratories with sleeping rats.

It is this aspect of discovering the places ‘behind the scenes’ that made us feel like we entered a time capsule. This initial feeling of loss of reference points inspired us to create these diverse characters and stagings that drew on the collective imagination. And above all, we wanted to pay tribute to this magical place of discovery and learning. We also wanted to share our unique outlook on the Palais and reinterpret what we had learned there. Naturally, we wanted to create a narrative staging that would transport the viewer to an imaginary world where temporalities mix, and the poetic and humorous atmospheres intersect, a place that refers to the childish sensations as well as the states of contemplation, weariness, reveries.

In a sense, when working collaboratively, one loses their artistic individuality. What happens to the artistic identities in your duo?

Our work process involves many stages ranging from the very act of photography to image editing, not to mention styling, decor, makeup, hairdressing, scenography, acting. All of these creative stages allow each of us to express ourselves as individualities who work toward a common creative goal, and provide us with enough space for individual self-expression. I think that we are more interested in the results of our work, akin to the two parents loving their child, than in our individual egos and personal gain. Our artistic personalities are different yet complementary, and we are both well aware how much either of us can contribute to the whole.

How would you describe your position in the world of contemporary art? Do you consider your duo as being Paris-based or international? What are your thoughts on the regionalisation of contemporary art, as in art being ‘Scandinavian’, ‘Baltic’, ‘Southern’, etc.? Thirty-fifty years ago we had rather distinct regional differences and distinctions. What is the situation in the art of photography today?

We are both French, but our ambition is to show and distribute our works internationally too. We think it is very important for the artists to be exposed to audiences and cultures other than the ones of their native country. Being exposed to the multitude of gazes gives the artworks their momentum. We create in order to share and transmit. Furthermore, given the aesthetic dimension of our images which are intended to speak to a certain collective imagination, it is important for us to consider ourselves as international artists because a lot of our work is done abroad, and we are very interested in encountering different cultures and places.

In addition to their basic artistic practice, many artists use other methods to express their ideas. In your exhibitions, you often use visual aids such as painted walls or displays with individual objects (mirrors, rugs, etc.). Yet you still remain within the genre of classical photography. Do you find the latter sufficient as your primary means of expression?

Since 2019, we have been using scenography to enhance the presentation of our photographic work in exhibition spaces. This helps us to create hybrid universes and immersive tales. We use the mise en abyme approach to staging, as it is very important for us to be able to choose the wall colour, floor texture, or the accompanying objects that would enhance the message.

Alternatively to our photographic work, we also make films. These two media refer to each other constantly, and we like to switch between them because this allows us to approach image composition differently. For example, in 2018, we made a medium-length (42 min) film Tres Estrellas which takes place on the island of Fuerteventura in the Canary Islands, where we play two distinct characters. Therefore we are both photographers and film directors.

I tend to associate your work with the aesthetic of boredom. The heroines seem passive and frozen in time. And this moment of inactivity seems to me infinitely aestheticised and truly bewitching. Is this an intentional effect you aim to achieve?

The aesthetic of boredom is indeed present in our work primarily because our youth was highly saturated with melancholia. We both come from province, and we both know all too well what it means to be bored and distrait while rubbing shoulders with the rural youth. It is this very same special atmosphere that we instinctively reproduce in our pictures and stories. We are interested in this timeless space where, devoid of all action, our characters are completely lost in their thoughts. The viewer feels it too and this allows them to project themselves into our stories where they also see their own experiences transposed onto the faces our characters.

These neutral, sometimes even closed off faces belong to the genuine yet unrepresented personalities and their ‘false selves.’ These are the faces of people we see in the street – people returning from work, also the absent faces that make up majority of the world we see in advertising and media. A neutral face is also an open door to observe, dissect and analyse the person without being seen. Our work talks about loneliness without criticising it; it is only a reminder that we are all lonely in our interiority among the millions of people we meet each day.

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Thank you

More: www.elsa-and-johanna.com

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