Nolwenn Brod — Devenirs

Galerie Confluences

Espace de photographie contemporaine 45 rue de Richebourg , 44000 Nantes (FRANCE)

From the 4th of may to the 22th june 2019

So are they

“All bets are off. In wooden frames of varying sizes clash fragments of lives; precise, timid and hidden lives: those that populate the forgotten areas of a scattered territory, those that assert themselves behind the thick walls of a house in Creuse, those that breathe in the green-tender-white fields that border the towns.
Nolwenn Brod conscientiously cuts out these lives, she articulates them in what offers itself not as a panorama of a silent France, but as the flesh of a determined body, gorged with stories, desires and everything that escapes photographic boundaries: this moment, this light, this format. There is no limit to bodies, so when the image frames them they disappear, leaving only an abstract trace on the photosensitive surface. These bodies of men and beasts inscribe furrows on smooth white spaces, leaving us to hear the cry, of pleasure or anger, that lifts them up. Nolwenn Brod thus retains the breath that rumbles beneath this tense belly, the neighing that makes the mare’s coarse hair quiver, the laughter of Diego performing a figure, the drop of milk from Mary’s breast.
His images take us beyond a so-called humanist photograph, like that of Dorothea Lange or Lewis W. Hine, which looks at forgotten humanity. It is not a question of giving a voice here: the image offers a silent, raw, devouring cry. Then all possible stories open up.
There is no longer a stake and no claim in front of these lives offered like rare pearls between rocks and plants. In the manner of Lisette Model or Emmet Gowin.
who, in the 1970s, tenderly contemplated the evolution of her family under her photographic eye, Nolwenn Brod watched the bodies settle in the tenuous space of his
viewfinder.
The bodies in her house are no longer photographed, they are photographic.”

Emilie Houssa