Valerie Belin: The Uncertain Beauty of the World

This monograph explores French photographer Valérie Belin’s body of work through over thirty series, from the 1970s to the present day. Ignoring chronological order, a game of correspondences takes place between the colour and black-and-white series of the artist, responding to each other, evolving and questioning our relationship to beauty, artifice and the impermanence of things.From the shooting to the retouching work, the photographer creates by successive touches and layers, like a painter playing on the ambivalence between the living and the artificial. The people represented, whether they are models, transsexuals, clown figures or Michael Jackson look-alikes, are, for the most part, in a transitional state towards “the desire to transform themselves into images”, says Valérie Belin, while her objects, such as vintage cars or others that have been involved in accidents, her engines or vintage dresses, seem to be animated, sublimated by the lens. The resulting images have a strong aesthetic and evocative power that embody both “the drama and beauty of the world,” as Sebastien Gokalp points out in his text. The book accompanies the retrospective of the artist presented at the Museum of Fine Arts in Tourcoing, the MUba Eugene Leroy, from March 17 through August 27, 2023.
ISBN 9782365113588. Atelier EXB. hb. 192 pages. 106 colour and b/w ills. 21 x 28 cm.
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