IT’S ALIVE !
Great review on Elephant online magazine about my new book . 5 questions asked by Louise Benson.
“It’s Alive! Fact and Fiction Combine in Estelle Hanania’s Unsettling Imagery; Nothing is quite as it seems in the French photographer’s work, exploring costume, fantasy and folk art. Her latest project is the result of a ten-year collaboration with the radical choreographer Gisèle. Estelle Hanania melds the real and the imaginary in her evocative, colourful photographs. Part documentary, part fiction, her varied projects have seen her turn her lens on everything from the Purim celebrations of North London to the costume and mask traditions of Silvesterklaus festivities in Switzerland. She will often spend years photographing a subject, with intensive research, building deeper connections over time.Her most recent project is the result of a ten-year collaboration with French-Austrian choreographer Gisèle Vienne, who studied philosophy and puppeteering, and has worked with the likes of writer Dennis Cooper and musician Stephen O’Malley. Dolls and marionettes are recurring features of Vienne’s theatre work, an interest that chimes with Hanania’s own fascination with the uncanny. A new book, It’s Alive! A Travers L’Oeuvre de Gisele Vienne, brings the two creative minds together, peering beyond the borders of the stage into a space of disbelief and wonder. Below, Hanania reflects on the project and her work to date.(...)”
“There is a tension between the real and the unreal in the images, which is a theme of your work. What draws you to this balance, how did you look to carry it forward with Gisele Vienne? In this project, the tension between artificial and natural is very striking when you step back, and there’s the fact that it’s theatre. Everything is staged, but Gisèle uses a lot of real elements like forest, animals, earth, and so it’s always this balance that I try to capture. It’s amplified by the dolls and the humans, and I realized that sometimes the dolls seem more lifelike than the humans—sometimes you’re wondering which is which. There’s all this ambiguity, which I really like. This is the tension that I like in Gisèle’s work, always asking, is this real? For me, it connects to the magic of photography. One of the first photos I took that I really liked was a hand holding a flame. I did this with a special effects person. It’s like in the theatre where the stone is not a stone, but it looks like a stone. It offered a whole territory for me to play with the fake and the truth, and I love that. I’ve always looked for that; when I was working with human sized puppets, it was because I was looking for that disturbing balance. It has an effect on people because you want to be certain of what you’re looking at. That’s also why I work analogue, because there’s not such a possibility of cheating. I want to make you wonder what happened. There’s a theatrical aspect to every project that I’ve done. Of course, in Gisèle’s work it’s very obvious, but I always love pushing people’s limits. Photography is always a bit fake, I suppose, especially now with social networks—it’s all a facade. “(...)
