2024
“(…)This installation, with its backlit screens responding to each other and shadows moving from one to the next, draws the viewer into a ballet of meticulous, orderly preparations. The choice of video, says Charles Fréger, ‘allows us to project ourselves around these gestures, their finesse, their precision and a certain discipline in their movements’. It also brings out the individuality of the ceremony, with each woman having her own very personal way of dressing up.
As in many communities, the moment when people get dressed is a kind of preparation, a game of awareness.(…)
(…)This work reflects the photographer’s dearest aspirations: to bring out the individual in the collective. Here, as in his other series, the women each convey a personal relationship with the costume, in the thousand details of the preparations that escape the sight of the costumes being worn. Revived in 1930, the art of Arles costume-making is finally coming out of the drawers, and this commission is a reminder of just how much its practice demands the utmost patience and know-how.(…)
Text: Pierre Morio for Le musée du Costume provençal – Fragonard, Arles
