Dads – Camille Leveque

“I thought it would be relevant to ironically use photography to convey absence – a media often, and almost automatically used to reframe memory. The whole point of the project was to maintain the idea of a ‘hole’ in the picture, symbolizing the hole in the family. Using pictures of a family without a dad on the picture was not even an option. It had to be a photo in which the father was indeed present, and then remove him -partially- to leave a faceless persona in the frame. I wanted to create an awkward visual statement in which one couldn’t ignore the missing of someone. It wouldn’t work in a series in which, for example the mother and children are posing and the father is taking the picture because in this scenario there is room for doubt.

In my series I want to emphasize the emptiness in the family though an actual (partial) presence. By materializing the absence one is undeniably transforming it into an actual physical form. ‘Dads’ is a blunt testimony of absence, a disturbing hole in the most powerful piece of evidence.“

Camille Leveque is a young French multi-disciplinary artist, founder of LIVE WILD collective. She has been chosen to be Metronom LIVEstudio Award in 2017 : she will come to Modena to explore and work in a new environment.

© Camille Leveque, Dads, 2015