Ephélis, 2020

Angelique Boissiere  

Since 2014, Angélique Boissière has been exploring film photography through medium format, which she appreciates for its square framing, in order to reconnect with an art that has attracted her since adolescence. From a classical artistic education maintained by the practice of dance, but also by a taste for Impressionist and Romantic imagery, the female nude seems obvious to her, for the immutable place it occupies in the History of Western Arts.

It is with this same aim of universality that the photographer flourishes in the use of elegant black and white.

At the beginning of her art, Angélique discovered herself through self-portraiture, which, although initially only a convenient way to learn how to take pictures, now possesses an exploratory dimension of the artist who finds herself free and more spontaneous than during sessions with models. Indeed, her self-portraits approach an introspective photography that infiltrates everyday life. Here, she invents and reinvents herself according to her inspirational impulses, the final images of which question reality: Where is the limit that separates the photographer from her character, the wife from the artist, the pure aesthetic subject of her reflection?

Conversely, shooting with models is defined as a more considered approach, and notably more demanding in terms of composition and mastery of light. If the human is at the heart of Angélique Boissière's work, it is in the simplicity and truthfulness of her capture that it is shown to be sublime, without artifice.

The eye is familiar with the entity that is drawn, dressed or unveiled, without ever being torn away from the desire to preserve the natural.

To show us these beauties captured in their essence, three self-published books were entirely thought out and designed by the artist: "Tides" (2018 – reissued in 2020) dedicated to four years of seaside photography with multiple melancholic portraits in natural light; "Silk" (2021) which brings together not only nudes and portraits, but also details and landscapes in an already more personal monograph, and finally "Reflets à soi" which brings together ten years of self-portraits (2024).

An artist as much as a craftswoman, Angélique is involved in all stages of image creation: the photographer develops her own films, which she digitally reworks to give them their uniqueness.

The film process is fully exploited by the desire to escort throughout these various processes, the imagined image, its physical support, then its ultimate realization. Beyond the use of a device, the artist becomes one with this extension which often materializes by a Pentax 67, or a Rolleiflex forming an integral part of many of his self-portraits.