A meticulous survey of French photographer Valérie Belin's stunning series from Magicians, Bouquets and Lido to Brides, Bob, and
Black Eyed Susan and continuing up to recent work including Super Models and All Stars.
Valérie Belin constantly explores matter, the body and the living, absence and their representations; she brilliantly develops her research on light, detail and texture. This volume presents her series produced between 2007 and 2016: "Fruit Baskets", "Lido", "Ballroom Dancers", "Vintage Cars", "Crowned heads", "Black-eyed Susan", "Settings", "Brides", "Bob", "Interiors" and "Still Life" as well as her most recent and original series, "All Star". The volume also comprises exhibition views and photographs taken during her performance at the Centre Pompidou in 2014. An immersion into a rare and unusual body of work that brilliantly questions matter and the living through the photographic medium.
"I come from painting." It is not surprising that Valérie Belin (born in 1964 in Boulogne-Billancourt, France, lives and works in Paris) should describe her work as coming from painting, for it would be curious indeed to call her a photographer. Although she uses a photographer's equipment, her masterful control of the technique enables her to transcend the imprint of reality and preclude reference to the world. Belin tells us nothing about the circumstances out there; she offers no evidence; she advances no arguments and makes no comments. She takes the world and makes pictures out of it. Her latest moves—colour and montage—are therefore perfectly logical. Thanks to digital technology, she can now also impose her will on the pictures she creates in colour. Never has photography been so far removed from naive naturalism and normality.
