Veronica (1995)

After my time at the Beaux-Arts de Tourcoing, I took over my first studio, housed in a nineteenth-century former malt house in Lille. Within this industrial space, with its vaulted ceilings and expansive open floors, I constructed a large darkroom, fitted with a pinhole camera and a period magic lantern lens. Using this apparatus, I produced a series of portraits with long exposures (each lasting around eight minutes) in an atmosphere thick with the heat of tungsten lamps. This lighting prompted the sitters, perspiring heavily, to close their eyes and remain still despite their discomfort. The resulting images bore the marks of duration and imprint, recalling the Veil of Veronica an image not made by the hand, but transferred through contact possessing a presence at once spiritual and spectral. This led me to title them Spirit Portraits. Subsequently, as part of my exploration into animism and the spiritual ownership of the image, I reworked one of the photographs by incorporating Maori motifs, thereby reinforcing the symbolic and ritual dimension of the series.