The “Schloss” is the nickname of a castle whose trunks full of old photos and memorabilia, a large building inchauffable Lorraine occupied by the Germans during World War II. The locals still call Imloul Sara and her cousin “granddaughters of the castle.” In this kingdom of drafts still reigns today the grandfather, the patriarch, around which the family of Sara meets.
Das Schloss is an introspective series, a photographic private session: poses sessions development prints, everything is there. Everything starts in the morning mist while Sara awaits its model, “Ms legs,” her aunt, whom she is going to hold the pose for long seconds that the technique requires that the artist has emerged: the calotype, it photographic process invented by Talbot. I only work with people I know, because I know it is very difficult to ask. And, calotype, everything is very slow. Because there was an intimacy, I would go further, they give me more, and the projection of my imagination is easier with those I love. Before that, the image was thought, dreamed. The artist has made preparatory sketches and accessories meticulously searched. Here, for example, she put a black cloth on top of the body of his aunt he disappears into the background. Before his view camera (Toyo-View 4×5), nothing is left to chance.
* Two different photographs, each taken 15 copies.
Photo #1
Photo #2
Sara Imloul
Photographe
Sara Imloul, a French plastic photographer born in 1986 and who lives in Paris, invites us through her work, to step up to and dive into, and thus discover an intimist universe in which the theatre of a world in black and white, made of darkness and light, plays out. In 2008, she started her first series, “Black Circus”, after discovering calotype, a photographic
process invented in the 19 th century that enabled the production of paper negatives and hence the reproduction of contact images.
Since then she has developed personal techniques in her lab that make it possible for her to turn her mysterious, dreamlike universe into images.
Her second series, Negatives (2012), comprises individual 4×5 camera images where contact leaves room for the original negative on baryte paper.
In 2013, working together with performance artist Nantais, she experimented with video and installation in T.R.E.S.E.D Ballad on the Imbalance of Falling.
Then began The Castle in 2014, a more introspective, plastic, Auto-8 series which is about and includes images of her own family. In this work, she places drawings and collages in her negatives. It was published under the same title by Editions Filigranes.
In 2019 Passages, from Shade to Images came out, a new series woven together like a sort of internal archaeology, a photographic reliquary of mental images. Price Levallois 2019
In 2020, À quatre mains, a joint project with sculptor Nicolas Lefebvre, in which through the eyes of the photographer the sculptor’s works take on a timeless dimension, like sacred ancestral archives.
And Chez Moi, release end of 2021.
Michel Gaillot
Auteur
Michel Gaillot is a philosopher, art critic and professor of philosophy at the ESACM (Higher School of Art Clermont Métropole). He is the author of multiple notably Sens – Techno, artistic and political laboratory of this (Editions Dis Voir, Paris, 1998) The place of the offering (Villa du Parc, Annemasse, 2005), and We the people voices (Editions of the Service of Plastic Arts of the City of Venissieux, 2002). He is currently preparing an essay on the thought of the philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy and a book on the subject of the image.