THREE-DIMENSIONAL PHOTO
The most urgent thing for a broken child is to enable him to rebuild himself. But how, and with what? And with whom?
I myself was one such, suffering desperately from the critical, or quite simply blind or at times indifferent opinion of adults who thought they knew best. In order to regain an image of myself that was not downtrodden, one that would give me back my dignity, I seized upon words and indeed the entire French language for tools. Their job was to help me recreate my portrait. Others before me had paved the way, starting with Gutenberg, all enabling me to believe in their power of redemption. There are all kinds of tools around us, it’s just a question of learning to recognise them, and use them. Thereafter, it’s as if you were touching up your own shadow or retracing the outlines of your own being – trying to belong to yourself.
Making a mould of your hand, foot or face is an extraordinary and fascinating experience, but right now, let’s concentrate on the face, the mirror of the soul, for it’s that that the child will immobilise at a particular moment of his life as if he were making a model. Olga Luna is near him, the ever-attentive guide, for we always need a master.
The child’s first challenge, not to mention first victory, is to overcome the anxiety of allowing himself to be “buried”, as it were, eyes closed, beneath the flow of plaster that so rapidly and definitively fixes his features. Immediately free of this coating which is no longer anonymous because it has adopted his features, the child is incapable of describing the significance of the moment when a new impression is revealed. Look at him grasping the object and playing with shadows or light cast from a window. In the hollows of that white mass, the impression of his moulded face, the negative of a three-dimensional photo starts to appear. He examines this face, his face, which is revealed on the inside. His gestures are self-explanatory: his outstretched fingers caress the negative of his own nose, lips, eyes and forehead, enthralled by a delightfully narcissistic feeling, as if fashioning or examining himself in order to know himself better, maybe even to check that he really exists. The light creates volumes that change with the slightest movement, giving new life to his features or deforming them. After the anxiety of being in the dark while the plaster was setting, this concave image of his face projects unusual volumes, strange shapes full of lights and shadows. He can play with his double, inventing expressions for him, as a way of making him exist.
From this mirage, he then creates a positive image by pouring clay into the white mould, as if participating in his own creation. His fascination guides his still awkward hands, occupying his full attention. He feels the need to touch it all again, even caress it. Nobody should interrupt him at this point, while he is shaping his image! It’s almost as if we were watching him having a meeting with himself.
What strength, what presence is given off by this ochre clay object representing his own portrait when freed from its plaster armour! Who can possibly describe the extraordinary pleasure felt by the boy at recognising himself and then naming his friends whose moulded images lie in a row on the display unit? Who can possibly recognise the indescribable quiver when the child experiences that moment of pride at being the creator of this work of himself? Will the memory of all those hours spent in the studio, where each clay face lay placed in its box, stay with these teenagers like a precious moment given over to carrying out an unforgettable act fired by their desire to actually accomplish something? What’s certain is that they will each take home their double fixed forever at an age when they were unaware of the intelligence and creativity contained within their fingers.
Brigitte Lozerec’h
Paris, December 2004