MARIE-CLAUDE


Mélanie WENGER



This post is also available in: French

Even on the best maps there are some treasures that never appear. Having just returned from a long photographic documentary on the Libyan revolution, the photographer Mélanie Wenger headed off for some holidays in a remote part of Finistère in Brittany. There, lost in a cul de sac in the middle of the Arrée hills, she came across a little old lady whom she asked for directions. The lady showed her the way and then asked, would you like to see my dolls? Mélanie Wenger accepted and thus started a journey into a universe which she would never leave : that of the seventy-five year old Marie-Claude, fifty years of which she had lived totally cut off from the outside world. A universe made of dolls and stuffed with a thousand ornaments and almost as many fabulous stories which Marie-Claude relates out loud, as if to structure and organise her life as best she can, where there is little space for the company of others, for comfort nor for memories.
That day in April 2014, the young photographer realised that she had come across a treasure. The house, the light that went through it, the rebellious and rough fantasy of that marginal woman which would bring us all back to happy childhood memories or nightmares. Everything there fascinated her and convinced her that she had to come back one day. And so three years of visits to Marie-Claude began, where she was the sole subject of a personal project and documentary which tried to achieve the goal of narrating the special reality of the central character through photography.

 



Editor : ACTES SUD
Publication year : 2017
Number of pages : 99
Language : Français-Anglais
ISBN 13 : 978-2330077440